From BYU to the NBA: Egor Demin aims to become Russia’s next basketball star

Egor Demin has already followed in the footsteps of Luka Dončić to Real Madrid and helped restore Brigham Young University to basketball prominence a year before AJ Dybantsa was supposed to do that.

But who Demin, 19, of Moscow, really can’t wait to be associated with is a household name among any hoops fan, as quick to the front of the mind as Luka or LeBron or Wemby. (This is a joke, and if we had turned it into a trivia question, no way you would have guessed.)

Demin is on the verge of becoming the first Russian-born player drafted by an NBA team since … Sergey Karasev in 2013.

“Well, that means a lot,” Demin told The Athletic. “Obviously, everybody knows about Andrei Kirilenko, the legend of Russian basketball. A lot more Russian legends that got to the NBA, and even though maybe they didn’t spend as much time in the NBA as they wanted to, they had great careers back in Russia in EuroLeague and became legends. And I was growing up looking up to Alexey Shved, playing in Khimki, and he was in the NBA, too.

“So for me, all these players are a huge example and learning resource.”

Demin is a 6-foot-8 guard who averaged 10.6 points and 5.5 assists in his lone season at BYU, in which the Cougars reached the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2011. The Athletic’s NBA Draft expert, Sam Vecenie, said Demin “can play the point and is the best passer in the (2025 draft) class. His vision is sublime.” While Vecenie doesn’t have Demin ranked quite as high on his most recent Top 100, he said Demin is a potential late lottery pick (the lottery goes up to No. 14). Demin seemed to boost his chances of being drafted so high with a strong showing at the NBA Draft Combine last month.

But the bigger picture on Demin transcends his game or even where in the draft he goes. Amid a yearslong international explosion of NBA talent, where upwards of 25 percent of all players are not from the U.S., there are no Russian-born players in the league, and Karasev (who averaged 3.0 points in 95 games over three seasons after the Cleveland Cavaliers selected him with the 19th pick in 2013) was indeed the last to be drafted from Demin’s country.

“For me, the goal is … if I can invest into this the right way and inspire kids to really see this as a reality — that it’s actually possible, because I just think that a lot of people in Russia have a dream but it never looks real,” Demin said. “For so many years, there was nobody from Russia, so it’s kind of like, it doesn’t feel real. My task is kind of to show that I’m from Russia, but it didn’t stop me from becoming an NBA player and accomplishing my dream.

“If I can inspire kids back there to work super hard and get on this level and believe that it can be real, that would be my best accomplishment over anything else, even over accomplishing my own dream of being an NBA player.”

The international success of the former Soviet Union, of which Russia was, by far, the biggest country, is why we have American NBA stars playing at the Olympics. It was the Soviets’ 1988 Olympic gold medal, with Lithuanian players like Arvydas Sabonis and Šarūnas Marčiulionis, that triggered a chain of events that led to the creation of the 1992 Dream Team in the U.S. (Before then, professional players did not compete at the Olympics.)

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian sports teams have been banned from Olympic and FIBA (the international governing body for basketball) events. Teams in Russia’s pro league are banned from qualifying for the EuroLeague — a league for the top teams on the continent — but Eastern Europe has always been a basketball hotbed.

Nikolai Tsynkevich, spokesman for CSKA Moscow, the top pro franchise in Russia, said the country didn’t have “obvious recognizable talent” for “quite a long time.” Tsynkevich also said the quality of the youth coaching in Russia was not particularly strong, citing the low pay coaches received, and said coaches were incentivized to win tournaments instead of cultivating talent.

“There is practically no international experience for youngsters and nowhere to display the talent — unless you go to a school abroad,” Tsynkevich said.

Kirilenko, a defensive specialist, was an exception to that rule. He was drafted out of Russia in the first round in 1999 and joined the Utah Jazz in 2001. He averaged 11.8 points over 13 seasons with Utah, Minnesota and Brooklyn, and was an All-Star in 2004 for the Jazz. Timofey Mozgov, the 7-1 center who was a part of the Cavaliers’ 2016 NBA championship team, was undrafted but lasted eight seasons. Shved, also undrafted, is still playing for Moscow’s pro team and spent three seasons in the NBA with Minnesota, Philadelphia, New York and Houston.

More recently, as Tsynkevich noted, Demin — and others — have gone abroad to boost their draft stock. In addition to Demin, Vladislav Goldin (a 7-footer who last played for the University of Michigan, and before that for Florida Atlantic) and Viktor Lakhin (6-11, out of Clemson) were also born in Russia and are draft-eligible, though Demin is considered much more of a prospect than the other two.

“I don’t know when was the last time, or if there ever has been a time, when there (were) multiple Russians on the same draft,” Demin said.

Before coming to the U.S., Demin joined Real Madrid’s basketball academy in the fall of 2021, at age 15. He went because of the prestige and reach of Real Madrid — Dončić starred there before starting his NBA career with the Dallas Mavericks — and entered their training and school program for younger players.

Demin didn’t speak Spanish or English before arriving in Madrid but is now fluent in both. Real Madrid provides personal tutors for players who don’t speak Spanish, and he learned English by speaking it casually with his roommate.

Demin advanced through the Real Madrid academy and would have had a chance to play for the organization’s top pro team. But he said he chose to go to BYU instead of staying at Real Madrid because he was unsure of the playing time he might be able to earn.

Alberto Angulo, academy director at Real Madrid, said Demin would have fit “perfectly” on the pro team there because of his “quality and versatility” but said he would need a “period of adaptation” in the NBA.

“One thing that helps a lot for Egor is his versatility,” Angulo said. “By playing in three different positions (either guard spot or small forward), his ability to contribute in different areas of the game, offensively and defensively, I think it’s going to give him more options. Being so tall is going to help him a lot in rebounding, especially on the defensive end.”

Demin struggled to shoot in his lone season at BYU (just 27 percent from 3-point range and 41 percent from the field overall). His numbers were nearly identical during the NCAA Tournament (his 1-of-8 shooting from 3 in the Sweet 16 against Alabama was only one reason the Cougars were blown out in that game), but in a two-point second-round win over Wisconsin, he contributed eight rebounds and eight assists while shooting just 3 of 10.

Had Demin stayed in school, he would have been paired on the perimeter with Dybantsa, the presumptive No. 1 pick of the 2026 draft. They are both about 6-8 to 6-9, and Demin’s size and passing ability as a point guard would have given Dybantsa even more room and options for scoring.

“I’m jealous of AJ being there next year because I think the program is going to rise even more, and the year after this season is going to be probably even better,” Demin said.

He knows he was welcome to return to BYU and is also aware that questions about his shooting in college have lingered, but he chose to pursue his NBA dream anyway.

“I never passed on an opportunity because of the challenges and risk,” Demin said. “So that’s why I couldn’t let myself pass on my dream.”

Well, that, and the responsibility he feels to become the next Karasev.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.