GCU Today Magazine - November 2017

GCU MAGAZ I NE • 1 9 Joshua Braun’s unabashed love for people and basketball did not arise just as his stature at Grand Canyon University surged. Only his birthmarkmight have been a part of himearlier. Braun plays basketball for GCU with a joy that heals his surgeries’ scars. That glee was apparent at age 5, when he bounded across a court with a ball-wide smile even after his dunks on Fisher-Price hoops were banned. Braun is an unselfish Lope. Those Fisher-Price league kids knew that when he went out of his way to set up shots for teammates who had not scored. Braun is Mr. GCU, as bestowed by a 2016 contest, with popularity matched by his friendliness. That geniality reflects the kid in the Fisher-Price league who entered the opposing postgame huddle to greet each player. “The bigger his platform has got, nothing changed,” said Taylor Downey, a GCU graduate and Braun’s best friend since third grade. “The first day I met him, I was outside playing. This goofy, lanky kid walked up. He had the goofiest smile. Literally, nothing has changed to the Josh we know now who is super-caring and super-nice.” Braun is seemingly in the right place at GCU, where he has been longer than most buildings. The Christian university fits a faith fortified through injuries and not contained to campus. His mother, Kathy, recently was told that he stopped to pray with a neighborhood woman enduring family issues. GCU kept Braun near his roots in Anthem, a community 27 miles north of campus, and provided an ideal basketball scenario. By redshirting his first year, Braun’s senior year coincides with GCU’s first tournament- eligible season and the transfer of childhood teammate Casey Benson. Braun is considered the Western Athletic Conference’s best player, a status not easily attained since becoming Dan Majerle’s first recruit in 2013. Braun, the son of college volleyball and soccer players, played basketball at age 1 and hit Wiffleballs over the house by age 2. Basketball turned serious at 11 on a traveling club with Benson, but he did not stop playing other sports until colliding facemasks broke his hand in eighth-grade football. Braun won a state basketball championship as a freshman but relentlessly aimed to improve, working on his high-rising jump shot and developing guard skills while playing the post. The recruiting letters of his dreams came. Offers followed. Before his senior year, he tore one knee’s anterior cruciate ligament. After rehabilitation, he was playing in a spring tournament in front of a Pac-12 coach when he tore the other ACL. The game video ended there. Braun’s younger brother, Justin, was too upset to keep recording. The college offers stopped. “Are you sure you want to keep playing?” Kathy asked Josh. “Don’t give up on me,” he told her with the determination that sent him into a cholla to catch his dad’s pass years earlier. “This is going to happen.” The injuries transformed Braun’s faith. Until then, basketball defined him – good or bad. “God got ahold of me and showed me that I’mmuch more than a basketball player,” Braun said. “My glory and my identity can’t hinge on basketball. I wouldn’t wish ACL surgeries on anybody, but I’m thankful they happened. I wouldn’t be the same man. I’m a better player, too, because it showed me how to do other things besides relying on athleticism.” That spring, Majerle was hired at GCU to navigate a four-year Division I transition. Shown Braun’s video, Majerle saw a tough, versatile, classy facsimile of himself. “I fell in love with him,” Majerle said. “It was perfect for both sides. He’s been everything and more as a player and person.” Braun, who got Majerle’s autograph as a boy, committed on his first GCU visit. A year later, Braun rarely played in his first six games until a teammate’s injury opened time at Central Michigan. Braun made 7 of 10 shots, scored 21 points and has started ever since. It was the same Braun verve he showed as a kid when he ran down a hallway and leaped in hopes of flying in Superman-caped pajamas. “He always had a positive, competitive attitude,” said his father, David. “Even when something didn’t go his way, he kept fighting. Attitude was the biggest thing.” That attitude is often beloved. Justin knows it well as a GCU sophomore who often gets asked about Josh or mistaken for him. “It takes an extra 30 minutes to get someplace on campus with him,” Justin said. “He’s genuinely an amazing guy. He’s a wonderful brother. He’s just as loving to strangers. He doesn’t do it for show. God just blessed himwith a talent for making friends.” Even off campus at a coffee shop, an elderly woman recognized Braun and invited her senior group tomeet him. “It turned into a scene,” Braun said. He embraced it like every sold-out game, any random chat or his master’s program. He adheres to Philippians 1:6: “He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” “He’s never done with me,” Braun said. “I’m thankful that He’s always making me a better man of God, a better Josh.” Joshua Braun, Coach DanMajerle’s first recruit at GCU, has become one of the top players in theWestern Athletic Conference. photo by travis neely “God got ahold of me and showed me that I’m much more than a basketball player. My glory and my identity can’t hinge on basketball.” VIDEOON NEWS.GCU.EDU Joshua Braun’s GCU evolution