SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY

Ambition, determination, and drive take AJ Reeves ’18 all the way to the NBA

By Joseph Iuliano P ’14, ’15, ’18, Assistant Head of Academic Affairs

On the coldest night of the winter, I drove up to Portland, Maine, with my wife, Jill, to attend our first NBA G-League Basketball game. Actually, we drove up to see Andre Reeves, Jr. (AJ) ’18, who, after four years at Providence College, had garnered a professional contract with the Maine Celtics. This night was all about numbers: 15 miles per hour on Route 128 on the stretch of I-95 between I-93 and the Danvers Split at rush hour; a temperature drop from +14 to -2 degrees as we crossed two state borders; a 7:00 p.m. game time; 1,928 and 979 points—AJ’s career scoring totals at Brimmer and May and Providence College, respectively.

The number 1,928 appeared in my head because I had checked the 1,000-point club banner in the Brimmer gym during halftime of the Varsity II (V2) Boys Basketball game against Beaver Country Day School the day before. Impressively, AJ’s point total sits first on the alltime scorers list. I let him know about the V2’s overtime win against Beaver when I spoke to him that same night, and he was very happy to hear of it. He is, of course, still a big Brimmer hoops supporter. “I love that. I love getting a win on Beaver. I would have scored a 100 on them. Beaver never wanted to play us when I was there.” As they shouldn’t have, I thought.

Doing the math, his average total was 482 points a year for 4 years. His Brimmer Varsity I Basketball teams (V1) played a total of 100 games, but AJ played fewer than that because he injured his back in his freshman season, and it took some time to recover. Nonetheless, he was a prolific scorer, averaging 20+ points a game and earning a place on the NEPSAC Class-AA First Team despite never playing in a tournament game during his career at Brimmer. The pièce de résistance for AJ was securing the Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year Award in his senior year, a singular honor for a Brimmer alum.

While driving through the Hampton, NH, tolls, I asked my wife if she remembered anything in particular about AJ when she taught him in Biology class during his freshman year. “He was a good kid and good in class,” she recalled fondly. A peek at his transcript, however, reveals that English was his best academic subject that year. But outside the classroom, on the basketball court, is where he really excelled, and over the next four years AJ would become a four-star basketball recruit—one of the best to come out of Brimmer and May—and a young man with a clear goal for himself: play ball at the next level. And the next level after that.

AJ started his high school years at Swampscott High School. Despite “having game,” he didn’t make the varsity team initially. He was understandably disappointed, admitting, “After tryouts, I played JV. I went home and cried a little bit.” That disappointment didn’t last long, as several Varsity players soon found themselves ineligible, and AJ was moved up. He explains, “Six games later, I was starting on Varsity. I ended up getting the ‘Best All-Around Player Award,’ which was made up for me because they gave a senior named Chad the Team MVP Award.” That “Michael Jordan” moment set him on the basketball mission he pursues today.

AJ came to Brimmer the following fall, reclassing as a ninth grader. He joined my advisory at the start of his sophomore year and my last year as the Upper School Head. With seemingly half his classmates, he often spent Morning Break in my office to listen, chat, and hang out with friends, and he always came to see me for morning check-in and scheduled meetings. During basketball season, many of those mornings were tough because of the team’s travel schedule and late practices. He was very tired and quiet during those times, but I had no problem with that. He was listening to the information offered, was getting his work done, and was doing what he loved in the afternoons. He had goals, and he was getting after them.

AJ turned up the heat in the classroom and put together his two best years of study in his junior and senior years. As he rose up in the classroom, he rose up even higher on the basketball court. While he began to find a recurring place on the Honor Roll, he also started making an impression on the court in his summer play with the Mass Rivals Basketball Club and during the winter with his Brimmer teams. During those years he played with six or seven teammates, two of whom were college-bound players (Ju’Quan Mills ’17, Babson College, and Jordan Minor ’19, Merrimack College), two of whom were college-level recruits (Stone McLaren ’18 and Jimmy Yfantopulos ’18), and three of his classmates, Ethan Eastwood ’18, Grant Iuliano ’18, and Dylan Rigol ’18. AJ often carried the scoring load for the Gators while his teammates provided support, but he was so good at scoring that college coaches the likes of Villanova’s Jay Wright pulled up a front-row seat in the Brimmer gym to watch him play.

AJ’s athletic talent extended beyond the basketball court. In the spring of his freshman year at Brimmer, AJ played the first of his two years of baseball and won the first of his two-league championships. In his senior year, he played again, and I was his coach at the time. In the championship game against Gann Academy, he was inches away from making the most spectacular catch of the season. Had his coach positioned him better, he would have done so, as he chased a screaming shot deep in the left-centerfield gap that just skipped off the fingers of his glove. Watching it, my jaw dropped to see him even get to it. He was happy when we closed out the win and clinched his second championship with seven of his classmates. He was excited when I recently reminded him of his baseball seasons. “I should have caught it; I was on a dead sprint,” he said. “[Those championships] showed that I left my stamp on Brimmer. I really wanted that. I am super happy that we won those championships.”

When asked to reflect on his time at Brimmer, AJ says, “Brimmer allowed me to be comfortable in any new situation, prepared me for college, and allowed me to be myself. Brimmer helped me find myself. Everything kind of clicked for me when I was 16. It was just a confidence boost in freshman and sophomore year.” I told him we were heading off on our first Winterim trips since 2019 and asked if he had any advice for our current students. He was quick to say, “Go somewhere with your friends where you want to have fun. If you are going to another country, have fun with it.” When he was a freshman he took a trip to Italy, on which I joined him as a chaperone, and as a junior he went to Cuba during the short period it was open to student tours. In August of 2019, AJ traveled abroad again to Lima, Peru, while a college student and a member of the USA Basketball Team that won bronze during the Pan Am Games.

After graduation, AJ chose to play near home at Providence College (PC), where he scored those 979 points, and in my house, PC men’s basketball games were appointment TV. Jill and I watched the games, often giving PC Head Coach at the time Ed Cooley an unfortunately unheard earful of advice about getting AJ the ball more but also seeing AJ, year by year, become more confident in his game, more skilled as a player, and more poised and centered as a young man. He grew up before our eyes at Brimmer, and then grew up again before our eyes on television.

AJ with his mother Louise at Senior Dinner in 2018.

In his freshman year he was named Big East Rookie of the Week three times, and as documented on the PC Basketball website, he “…[s]cored 29 points as he shot 10-13 from the field, including 7-9 from three-point territory to set a PC freshman scoring record in an opener versus Siena.” He was so el fuego on the court that year, that the NBA scouts sat up and took notice. At one point during that season, I had a phone call from a scout for the Oklahoma City Thunder who wanted some background insight about AJ as a person—for the NBA draft. While I have done reference phone calls in the past for current and former students and advisees, this phone call was a bit different. However, this was a layup for me. I got to talk about AJ and pump his tires to an NBA team, and everything I told them was just genuine AJ—his smile was in front of me the whole time I spoke.

In his senior year at PC, he and his team made a run into the NCAA tournament that he says was just the best basketball experience ever — just so much fun. And about not taking a fifth year of eligibility in college, he says, “I have no regrets. The landscape of college basketball is tough. You can’t recruit. Everybody is trying to hit the transfer portal.”

Having completed his undergraduate degree with a major in Sports Media and Management, AJ remains intent on further developing his mind, and he is doing a lot of reading. Currently, he is taking on The Art of War, the ancient Chinese military disquisition on the war strategy written by Sun Tzu in the 5th century BC. As his former teacher of International Relations, I was quite impressed, though when asked, he had to admit that he didn’t remember a whole lot from that class. I smiled and felt the pain at the same time. Later I looked up the grade report comments I had written for him and found this one from the second semester: “[AJ] was also a contributing strategist and sometimes provocateur in the Risk game, though in the end his team failed to take over the world as we ran out of time to complete the contest.” Perhaps with more time and The Art of War under his belt then, AJ and his Risk teammates Kimberly Santos ’18 and Michael Hastings ’18 would have run the Risk board. But now, with time and The Art of War in hand, AJ has firmly set his sights on running the boards as a professional basketball player in the NBA G-League.

Assistant Head of Academic Affairs Joe Iuliano P ’14, ’15, ’18 with his senior advisees (L-R) Jack Donnelly ’18, Sophie Lapat ’18, and AJ Reeves ’18.

In July of 2022, AJ registered his first professional points in Las Vegas as a member of the Celtics Summer League Team. He re-signed with them in October as an “affiliate player” on the Maine Celtics roster, a designation that allows him to remain a free agent, available for any of the 30 NBA teams to sign. AJ has what is called an Exhibit 10 contract, which is a one-year, minimum salary agreement between the NBA club and the player. Such a contract is good for both the club, allowing flexibility and the ability to maintain control of a prospective player, and for the player, who becomes a paid professional basketball player with the possibility of gaining exposure and experience and the chance to move up to the parent club if they play well.

Being a professional basketball player is a dream come true for AJ, but it is also a lot of hard work. He says, “It feels really, really good. I’m learning the game—it’s a very different game than college. I am working on improving my ball handling and shooting off the dribble. And off the court—I’m reading to sharpen my mind—hence, The Art of War.” He does this reading in his hotel room in Scarborough, Maine, a short, 10-minute ride down the highway from the Expo. Of life in Maine, AJ says, “It’s nice. Very different than what I am used to, though. I like it. It’s quiet and there are a lot of deer. It’s cold. I don’t see myself moving up to live in Maine, but the food is really good up here.”

Reeves ’18 excelled during his time as a Providence College Friar (photo credit: Jay Coney Visuals).

The brass-tacks titled Portland Exposition Building where AJ’s team plays is over a hundred years old, and the second-oldest arena in continuous operation in the United States. Fortunately, we found a parking space adjacent to the building and had a short walk in the deep freeze before we got inside. With seats for 3,000 fans, The Expo was about three-quarter filled for the game. The game floor looked relatively new and was laid over an older wooden floor which looked to have seen better days. A halo of lighted square advertisements for NAPA Auto Parts and cPort Credit Union shined above the stands alongside a ceiling that was a mesh of I-beam rafters and plastic covered, industrial-strength HVAC. It wasn’t The Garden, but it was filled with a fanbuzz, pre-game anticipation, and two dozen professional basketball players, AJ Reeves ’18 being one of them.

To get to our seats behind the home team’s bench, we had to circumnavigate the court, one of the quirks of the Expo’s layout. Luckily, the route took us right to AJ who was warming up launching three-point shots from the corner at the far end of the court. From a distance one could easily see that his shooting stroke has gotten even smoother than when he was scoring 20 a night at Brimmer and dropping threes in Big East arenas from Providence to Omaha. As we approached him, AJ flashed a natural smile and pointed to a young fan in the front row to ready himself for a pass. The ball went softly to the boy, who had a big smile as well, and then was passed back to AJ for the shot. Swish. Assist to young fan. Big, beautiful smiles all around.

We smiled too, and then AJ looked up and saw us and smiled once again. Frankly, he has one of those smiles that you just can’t see too often. We said hello, and he reached out and gave Jill a big hug and then grabbed my hand and gave me a hug, too. He looked great in the uniform and seeing him on the court was just familiar territory. He belonged there. We didn’t linger because he had to get ready to play, but as we walked around the far end of the court toward our seats, we saw him once again smile and toss a ball to another youngster. It came back with a smile. Swish. Another assist. Another smile from AJ.

I hadn’t seen AJ play live since his freshman year at PC when they played Boston College that December. Being a BC graduate school alum, I would normally root for BC, but not in this game. BC had not been good since the Al Skinner days, and AJ was playing for PC. And did he ever play. He scored 24 points on 4 for 9 shooting from three-point land, including a game-tying deep 3 with 4 seconds on the clock at the end of regulation. PC went on to win in overtime. It was exhilarating. But in January he got hurt and had short minutes in 4 of 5 games, scoring 24 points only one more time over the final 16 games of the season. A bad wheel is a difficult condition to adjust to for a baller.

Approaching 24 years old, AJ is listed at 6’6” and 205 pounds in the Maine Celtics game day program. He says he is on a serious lifting regime three-four days a week. A photo of him in the team uniform shows AJ with new muscles but two familiar characteristics: a green uniform and his million-dollar smile. Next to the photo, his briefly narrated basketball resume begins with these opening words, “A four-star recruit in the 2018 class out of Roxbury, Mass. and Brimmer and May School…”

The game that night was against the College Park Skyhawks, the Atlanta Hawks G-League team. AJ started on the bench. At halftime the score was College Park 60, Maine 39, and AJ had not registered a minute. The Celtics porous defense and poor shooting had combined to build the deficit, and the coach found no solution. In my mind, he hadn’t looked far enough. In the second half, AJ watched from the bench but clearly itched to get on the floor and help his team. At each substitution and time-out, he high-fived his teammates and encouraged them to keep working hard. The game ended as an 18-point loss for the Celtics, who never came closer than 9 points in the second half—three 3’s from AJ would have taken care of that.

Of his teammates, AJ says, “My team is pretty cool. A lot of these guys I have played with in summer league and at camps.” But most are several years older than AJ, who is one of only three young players on his team. As Brimmer Coach Tom Nelson points out, “He’s young. Everybody on that team has been playing for years, and [the Maine Celtics] just picked up Tony Snell; he’s thirty-something years old!” (Since 2013, Tony Snell has played over 600 games with 7 different teams in “The Association” and is now back in the G-League.) Making playing time tighter, at the start of the season, the team could have put five shooting guards out for the starting lineup if it wanted to. The competition for time is fierce, the DNPs discouraging, but AJ’s focus remains firmly on his goals.

The game is essentially the same at all levels—put the basketball into the hoop, take care of the basketball, play defense, and rebound—it’s just that the speed, athleticism, and size increases exponentially as one heads into the professional levels. The coach needs to strategize for the opponent and read the game as it happens in front of them. The players need to be ready to play when they get the call to go into the game. On this night, however, firstyear Maine Head Coach Alex Barlow elected to rotate through 9 of his 12 players, and AJ recorded a DNP Coach’s Decision. He’s had to contend with a few of those this season.

He had a talk with his coach before the season and told him he didn’t want to know ahead of time what his role would be in a game. He would just make himself ready for whatever time he had. “It’s about mindset,” he says. “When you are here, everybody is good. It’s just about your mindset and what you are capable of. We are probably 30 games into the season; it’s not about a talent thing; it’s about being ready. I learned that freshman year in college. I just had to be who I was—smiling, happy.”

After the game when we talked, I could see his disappointment and felt it, too. It brought me back to conversations with my sons when they had to sit through a college baseball game where they knew they could have helped. It’s frustrating to be an athlete, and even more so when one has been an engine that helps drive teams so much of the time. I told AJ I had thought about walking down behind the bench and giving the coach some advice about how to read the game but knew that would not have gone well. I just so badly wanted to be able to help him, even more than when he was my advisee at Brimmer.

“It’s extremely hard,” he said. “As a competitor, you always want to be in the game. It’s a mental thing—being mentally locked in the whole time. You can’t lose your confidence. You have to have a swagger to yourself.” As we shook hands and said good night, I offered my last bit of encouragement, “Keep your head up, AJ. Keep working.”

“I will. You know I will.” And he flashed a bit of that beautiful smile. He will. I know he will.

The next night, the Celtics beat the College Park Skyhawks 132-108, and AJ played for four minutes, taking two shots but not scoring. Happily, Brimmer faculty members Nancy Bradley, Chris Hardman, and Pete Slaski, each of whom made the trip to Maine to see him play, had the opportunity to see him wearing green out on the court. ■

Upper School Math Teacher Pete Slaski P ’34, ’36 traveled to Maine with his kids to see AJ play.