Matt Varga “Tanking” discourse is at an all-time high, and while your mileage may vary on where you land within the argument, everyone is in agreement about the stakes. In no sport does the possibility of the #1 pick have more gravity, something the Timberwolves, Spurs, and Mavericks have demonstrated just this decade. The 2026 class is already being spoken about in hallowed terms, making it very much a conversation whose name will be called by Adam Silver first, yet AJ Dybantsa is doing everything in his power to ensure it’s his name on the commissioner’s card.
The NIL era has made Dybantsa a household name already, even beyond the draft obsessives, arriving on our front page with splashy product reveals like that of the Nike GT Future. In a magazine-like feature just released by the Swoosh themselves, the BYU product waxed poetic on what it’s been like to share spaces with brand and league legends like Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Paul George, his overall journey from a precocious middle schooler to the odds-on favorite for #1, and what he hopes is in store for his Nike relationship.
As you may have guessed, it’s the latter section we’re paying the most attention to. In this interview, AJ adds some narrative color to what’s been his most compelling PE series, revealing that his Spider-Man colorways on the GT Cut series trace back to his earliest days as a hooper. A mini hoop with a heavy dose of web-slinger imagery was a present from his father to a 5-year-old Dybantsa, planting a nascent seed in his journey as a player. It’s then that he reveals his ultimate goal as a Nike athlete:
A signature shoe is the goal. When I signed with Nike, I started thinking it would be cool to get my own shoe. Because Nike would always send me different Kobes or Jas or KDs. So it was like, ‘I’m wearing all these other players’ shoes — what if I could get my own and other players wore mine?’
Making good on that, Nike also reveals the AJ Dybantsa signature logo in this spread, a five-pointed star meant to evoke diamonds, using brutalist interpretations of his initials to create that geometry. Whether AJ will eventually reach that goal of having a signature shoe, undoubtedly the product bearing his name will continue to hit the hardwood and eventually the market. All that to say, get used to this logo; you’ll be seeing it plenty.
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