AJ Dybantsa enters Tuesday’s NBA Draft at the top of most experts’ lists, and the Brockton native could make a piece of Massachusetts basketball history if his name is called first. If that happens, he would become only the third Massachusetts product ever selected No. 1 overall, joining Jimmy Walker in 1967 and Patrick Ewing in 1985.
The significance goes beyond one pick. Dybantsa is the only one of those three born in Massachusetts, and he has said he wants people to know where Brockton is on the map. In 2024, he put it plainly at Emmanuel College: Massachusetts has players, and he wanted the state to get credit for them. That line matters now because Tuesday is the moment when the draft room turns a possibility into a record, or closes the door on one more year of waiting.
Massachusetts has long been part of the NBA conversation, but not always in the way people assume. For more than half a century, from 1947 to 1999, the path to the league ran largely through high schools. Since 2001, nearly 30 players have been drafted with ties to Massachusetts, yet only 11 of them were homegrown players from the state. The numbers help explain the split: Massachusetts has been a talent pipeline, but often one built on players who developed elsewhere and only later came back into the draft picture.
That is the friction inside Dybantsa’s story. The state has produced names such as Terrence Clarke, who was projected to be a first-round pick in 2021 before a fatal car crash in Los Angeles just weeks before the draft. The NBA later honored Clarke as a ceremonial pick, and he was the first Boston area first-rounder since Nerlens Noel in 2013. The last time a Massachusetts-born player had his name called at the NBA Draft was five years ago, which is why Dybantsa’s rise carries more weight than a single prospect ranking.
One reason the moment feels so loaded is that Massachusetts basketball has often been measured against its outsized reputation. Bob Hubbard, from Springfield, was drafted by the Providence Steamrollers in 1947, and later generations kept the state in the draft mix through players with different paths and different labels. But the homegrown milestone has remained rare. If Dybantsa goes first on Tuesday, he will not just be the top player on the board. He will be the player who ends a long wait for a Massachusetts-born name at the top of the draft.
The draft will settle the question in one call. If it is not Dybantsa at No. 1, the state’s next chance at a homegrown top pick goes back into the pile with everything else that has been almost, close, or projected.
