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Bryce Dejean-Jones was not the type to give up easily. Neither is his mother.
That’s why, just nine months after the former UNLV basketball player’s death, she is doing her best to keep his memory alive with the Bryce Dejean-Jones Foundation.
Dejean-Jones was one of the most talented players in recent Rebels’ history, and he had just completed his first season in the NBA when he was shot and killed on May 28, 2016, while trying to enter a stranger’s apartment in Dallas, Texas. He was just 23 years old.
For Fran Jones, coping with her son’s death was difficult and confusing, but she decided to channel her grief into something productive. She said Dejean-Jones often talked about leveraging his basketball ability to help the community, so Jones decided to honor her son by giving back.
“I don’t know if [his death] is something I’ll ever get over,” Jones said. “But I think this is a way of continuing something he wanted to do, so it’s kind of helping his dream stay alive. I think it’s fulfilling to help others. It feels good to give back, and it feels really good knowing that this is something he wanted to do.”
Jones started the nonprofit organization just months after Dejean-Jones’ death, despite no experience with charities. An office manager by day, Jones is still learning as she goes, but so far she’s partnered the Bryce Dejean-Jones Foundation with a church in Inglewood, Calif., (Dejean-Jones’ hometown) and the Las Vegas-based Three Square food bank to help serve families over the holiday season.
“There was a lot I didn’t know at first,” Jones said. “It was just an idea. We’re trying to develop it and connect with the right financial parties so everything is set up correctly and everything is legal and donations are going where they’re supposed to go. It’s been a challenge because it’s such a new experience.”
Her drive to succeed is a family trait recognizable to anyone who knew Dejean-Jones. He arrived at UNLV in 2011 as the first recruit of former Rebels coach Dave Rice, and after three turbulent but productive seasons, Dejean-Jones graduated from UNLV and moved on to Iowa State for one year as a grad transfer.
Despite not showing up on any draft radars, Dejean-Jones never wavered in his belief that he was an NBA player. He was cut by the New Orleans Pelicans during the 2015-16 preseason and sent to the Development League, but earned another look by playing well for the Idaho Stampede. That won him a 10-day contract with the Pelicans, and Dejean-Jones made the most of his first opportunity in the NBA, averaging 5.6 points in 14 games before a broken wrist ended his season.
The Pelicans were impressed enough to offer him a three-year contract despite the injury. It was a testament to how hard Dejean-Jones had worked and how diligently he had pursued his dream.
Kreigh Warkentien, an assistant athletics director at UNLV, knew Dejean-Jones better than just about anybody. She was the director of basketball operations when BDJ arrived at UNLV, and she saw firsthand how much he wanted to make it as a professional athlete.
“If we would have put a bed in the gym, he would’ve lived there,” Warkentien said. “He was a total gym rat. From day one Bryce told me, ‘I’m a basketball player, I’m not a student.’ But because it was so important to his family and so important to Coach Rice to see him graduate, he really worked at it and took it seriously, and he ended up with a GPA over 3.0 his last semester. He was such a hard worker.”
Dejean-Jones’ time at UNLV didn’t always go smoothly. He was suspended multiple times for lashing out at teammates and coaches in the locker room, but seemed to put those issues behind him as he advanced in his career.
“Bryce was really smart, but too smart for his own good a lot of times,” Warkentien said. “As a competitor, his passion got the best of him sometimes. He had his trials and tribulations, but outside of the locker room he was shy and quiet. That’s hard for a lot of people to believe, but he was a quiet kid who liked to read. He was always the first to volunteer if I came to [the team] with a community service opportunity. When it came to giving back, he really blossomed into someone who took pride in it. He made Las Vegas a second home for himself.”
In the spirit of Dejean-Jones’ perseverance, his mother is working just as hard to get the Bryce Dejean-Jones Foundation up and running.
“He always had ideas about giving back to the community,” Jones said. “He would talk about after-school programs and scholarships and tutoring and basketball camps. He had all these grand ideas. Unfortunately, with what happened after his first season, he never got a chance to do those things, so I want to continue on and try to make it happen for him.”
Jones has established the foundation as a tax-exempt charity and hopes to have a website operating soon.
It’s starting small, but Jones has found that plenty of people from Bryce’s life have been willing to pitch in to help keep his legacy alive.
“Kreigh has been wonderful,” Jones said. “Kreigh constantly keeps in touch and reaches out and checks with us all the time. And some of his old teammates like Justin Hawkins and Khem Birch have been really, really supportive throughout all of this. The response has been outstanding.”
Jones said she’s planning several initiatives for the foundation in the next year, one of which might be a youth basketball camp in the Inglewood area.
BDJ would have done it just that way.
“Really what it’s about is we want to keep his legacy alive,” Jones said. “This is something he really believed in but never got a chance to do. We’re going to do our best to make sure it goes on.”
For more information on the Bryce Dejean-Jones Foundation, or to donate, send to:
Bryce Dejean-Jones Foundation
P.O. Box 2497
Inglewood, CA 90305
Federal tax ID: 81-2791179
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