This story seems in SLAM 252. Get your copy now.
Following a four-year profession at Dayton, the place he led the nation in three-point share final season, Washington Heights native Koby Brea is heading south to the varsity of his desires, the College of Kentucky.
It began at these courts on Nagle Ave. Within the coronary heart of Washington Heights, a neighborhood north of Harlem, tucked behind the hallowed important courtroom of Dyckman Park, lies a smaller half-court lined with a singular black fence. It’s there {that a} younger Koby Brea fostered his love for the sport. Just some blocks away from his father or mother’s house, Koby would go to the courtroom and meet up together with his mates and different native youngsters to draft their very own groups and hoop all through
the day.
When he was 6, he would lace up his kicks, seize his ball and head down the road together with his dad, Stephan, to fulfill up together with his pop’s mates. They’d journey from park to park, hooping to their hearts’ content material. “They nonetheless play to today. I don’t know the way, however they do,” Koby says. And there was Koby, witnessing that love for the sport in actual time.
“Being round it, all you are able to do is de facto watch and benefit from the trip,” he says. “Any time they ran down a method, I’d be on the opposite half attempting to shoot, attempting to get my ball and be fast earlier than they got here again down.”
A couple of years later, he was waking up at 5 a.m. to work out at those self same courts. Everybody sleeping whereas he was working? That was the perfect motivation.
Dyckman set the usual for who Koby Brea needed to be. In 2024, that might be the perfect shooter in faculty basketball and the newest addition for Mark Pope and the Kentucky Wildcats.
Fifteen years after first being launched to the concrete courts, Koby is again at Dyckman. It’s a piping scorching mid-August afternoon and the solar is unrelenting. Pay it no thoughts, Koby’s suited in a full Eric Emanuel child blue tracksuit with matching “Industrial Blue” Air Jordan 4s on-foot. After watching him be taught to play and finally compete in the summertime Dyckman tournaments, his father, mom and youngest brother Tyler now stand off to the facet as we snap images. It’s a household affair. For the Breas and Washington Heights, that’s all the time been the case.
“Rising up in Washington Heights, it’s like having a extremely massive household round you,” Brea explains. “You’re simply round a complete bunch of individuals which can be similar to you, that come from the identical tradition, the identical background. We’ve a whole lot of Dominicans, a whole lot of Latin individuals, and any time you’re strolling down the road, you see any person that’s similar to you, that appears similar to you, talks similar to you. It simply looks like household.”
The countless hours spent surrounded by his group, on and off the courtroom, set the stage for his dedication to those that have poured into him. As he stands at middle courtroom with Tyler dribbling round his legs, he sees his personal childhood mirrored again at him. It’s an eerily acquainted feeling, one he skilled only a few weeks previous to our shoot when he first stepped foot contained in the Joe Craft Heart in Lexington. For years, Koby envisioned himself suiting up within the Huge Blue. Now it’s a actuality.
“You see all of the blood, sweat and tears that was put into that gymnasium that I simply walked into,” he says of that go to.
When Koby wasn’t dicing it up at Dyckman, he was watching Karl-Anthony Cities, Devin Booker and the remainder of the mid-2010s Wildcats. He longed to get pictures up beneath the load of the eight banners that hung above. That stage of status was fascinating. So he aimed for it.
Koby remembers the primary time his coach at Monsignor Scanlan Excessive Faculty introduced him to the campus within the Bronx. As they made small discuss concerning the group and the varsity, the coach requested Koby the place he needed to play on the subsequent stage.
“I keep in mind I used to be a child with massive desires and I instructed him, I need to go to the College of Kentucky,” Koby says. “And he checked out my dad and he was like, You’ve acquired a wild one. I don’t know if I can get you to Kentucky, however I’ll ensure that I get you someplace. That simply goes to indicate that when you’ve individuals round you which can be assured in you, need to push you essentially the most you may, you even have that confidence in your self that that is what I need to be and that’s how I’m going to make it. It units it off for your self.”
Heading into the 2024-25 season, Koby Brea’s not solely suiting up for Kentucky, he’s anticipated to assist this system seize nationwide prominence as soon as once more.
However the Washington Heights native didn’t simply get to the blue blood of his desires. He grinded his manner towards the chance. Popping out of Scanlan as a second group All-New York choice, Koby set his sights on a profession as a Dayton Flyer. He took house A-10 Sixth Man of the 12 months in his redshirt freshman season, however suffered a pair of stress fractures in every of his legs the next 12 months that prevented him from taking that subsequent leap he was prepared for.
As a substitute, he spent the summer time getting kind capturing in whereas sitting in his wheelchair. It took everything of the offseason and a portion of the preseason to totally get well. With simply two weeks of practices and conditioning underneath his belt, Koby proceeded to mild almost each internet within the nation on hearth, main the Flyers into the second spherical of March Insanity.
On 201 makes an attempt, Koby led the nation in three-point share, nailing 49.8 % of his pictures from past the arc. Sorry, unsure for those who caught that. Koby Brea hit rattling close to half of his pictures from downtown. Throw in 11.1 factors and almost 4 boards a recreation and the accolades began to stream. A second A-10 Sixth Man of the 12 months honor was appropriately bestowed and similar to that, Koby was immediately on the radar of each main powerhouse within the nation. On the finish of the day, Kentucky all the time had the higher hand.
“This 12 months I simply actually needed to take the chance to take a step again so I might take a pair steps ahead. I got here again to school with the expectation that each one I used to be going to do that summer time was work,” Brea says. “Work as laborious as I might, work the toughest that I ever had, simply to make sure that I had an incredible 12 months at an incredible new place.”
The wait, the work, it was all price it. He made his stamp at Dyckman. He discovered himself at Dayton and inscribed himself into the school basketball report books. Now he’s placing up pictures in the identical gymnasium Booker did almost a decade in the past, as visions of the 2025 NBA Draft develop nearer and nearer to actuality. However within the right here and now, Koby Brea is letting these years price of classes information him as he takes it daily. He’s stronger, more healthy and extra deadly than ever with the ball in his palms. And as he turns the chapter to his collegiate epilogue, there’s a looming purpose that Koby’s longed for ever since he took these walks to Dyckman together with his dad.
“The expectation is solely to hold the ninth banner. Me, I’m a real competitor, and I delight myself on successful. I positively need to go away my stamp all over the place I am going. Being at Kentucky, the usual is so excessive and everyone expects success,” Koby says. “I simply need to have the chance, daily, to continue to grow and be the perfect model of myself.”
Portraits by Alexander Zhang and UK Athletics.
