Brandon Davies’ journey has been an adventure that started as a goalkeeper in Utah

Brandon Davies’ life has been an adventure since day one. His birthplace is Philadelphia, but Brandon was just two days old when he moved to Provo, Utah, with his adoptive mom Linda. The biological mother was only 16 when he was born; Linda already had two adopted children of Indian origin, but a year earlier she had adopted a third child who unfortunately died soon, leaving a terrible void in her existence. She decided to fill it by adopting another one, Brandon in fact. This is how a black boy born on the east coast found himself in the Mormon state of Utah, in the college town that is home to the Brigham Young University. The Davies kids have always been an interesting mix: the biggest Shawn is 1.70 mt tall, Heather is smaller and then there’s Brandon, who is 2.08 mt tall.

The first love is never to be forgotten, but on closer inspection it was a sign of destiny. When he started playing sports seriously, Brandon opted for soccer. He was a forward, a striker, and scored often. But he kept growing, he struggled to play in tight spaces and went to the goalpost. He was also a good goalkeeper for the Utah Rangers Football Club. But it didn’t last long ("I was standing there in those posts, doing nothing, it wasn’t fun") and eventually decided to move to basketball. Quickly, he became a small local celebrity playing for Provo High School with which he won the state title as a sophomore and junior, finishing second as senior despite the team’s record that year was 17-1. He was called up for the Utah Valley All-Star Classic and was named MVP. Salt Lake City’s newspapers, the Tribune and the Deseret News, included him among Utah’s best players.  Brandon could choose any school in the western part of the country, but ultimately decided to stay home. He didn’t even move a few kilometers, he accepted BYU’s proposal, which still has an excellent basketball tradition. "I had friends who went there, I could stay close to my mother, help her," he explained.

With the Cougars, he would have played 135 games, averaging 12.4 points and 6.2 rebounds for his career, during a period of great results for BYU. In 2009/10, when he was in his freshman year, the Cougars won 30 out of 36 games and qualified for the NCAA Tournament. They were the team of the creative, flamboyant Jimmer Fredette – later in the NBA but also in the EuroLeague at Panathinaikos -. That same team one season later, reached the number 3 in the national ranking, won 27 games of its first 29, and was unbeaten at home, when Davies, who completed Fredette’s game, was suspended for moral reasons (in other words, he violated the so-called and rigorous code of honor imposed by the Mormon religion: "I take it as a lesson, I had made a commitment and I had failed to respect it"). The following year, Fredette was in the NBA. Davies was rehabilitated but obviously the team was no longer as good as it was earlier, although he still managed to play two games in the NCAA Tournament. In the end, he scored 15.2 points per game with 7.7 rebounds as a junior, 17.8 and 8.0 as a senior. In both seasons, he was named to the all-conference best team. BYU made the semifinal of the NIT Tournament in his senior season, another not so irrelevant accomplishment.

In Barcelona, ​​he stayed three seasons. He won the Spanish title in 2021, won the King’s Cup twice, played the Final Four twice, in Cologne facing Olimpia in the semifinal once. In 2021 he was named to the All-EuroLeague second team alongside Shavon Shields, four times in his career he has been MVP of the week. Over his five EuroLeague seasons, while approaching the 2,000 points and 1,000 career rebounds, Davies has reached the Final Four three times (one year they were not played) and he’s won 112 games out of 169. Keep doing this, Brandon.