Brandon says it’s happened twice. Justin’s skeptical, but doesn’t want to call Brandon a liar.
The Ray brothers have played plenty of one-on-one basketball games in the backyard of their childhood home. Justin — who’s three years Brandon’s senior — has won most of them. He’s a couple of inches taller than Brandon, which helps.
But a time or two — depending on who you ask — Brandon has got the better of Justin.
The elder Ray swears it was just a mental lapse.
“I probably just wasn’t taking him seriously enough,” said Justin, laughing as he attempts to recall Brandon’s win(s?). “I probably let him get too big a lead, and then he hit a lucky shot at the end to beat me. I bet that’s all it was.”
“I got him once when I was in the seventh grade,” said Brandon. “And then he came back home from college a little while ago, and I got him again. So, yes, it was twice.”
If it wasn’t obvious, the competitive nature between the brothers is strong.
Occasionally, they’ll team up. Like when they run duos in Fortnite together. It’s their favorite game to play. Or like that one year in 2023, when Brandon was a freshman at Eastside and Justin was a senior.
“That season was so fun,” said Brandon. “I didn’t play a ton because I was still young, but whenever Justin and I were in the game at the same time, our chemistry was crazy. We were hard to stop.”
When they’re not working or playing together, however, that competitive drive between the two brothers often takes over.
So, when Brandon — now a junior for the Eagles — set Eastside’s all-time scoring record last week, he couldn’t wait to tell his older brother. Because that record used to belong to Justin.
Brandon dropped 44 points on Dec. 2 against Woodmont, leading Eastside to a wire-to-wire 86-72 win.
“Brandon is blessed with so much talent,” said Eastside head coach Jamar Armstrong. “He’s naturally gifted in the sport. And I think a lot of that comes from his family.”
That 44-point performance broke Justin’s previous school record of 42 points in a single game, a mark he set as a junior in 2021-22.
It was Dec. 6 when Brandon finally got to tell Justin the news in person. Justin — who is a Division-1 sophomore basketball star at Monmouth — had just finished a game against Georgia Tech.
“I’m not gonna lie. When I heard he broke my record, I may have been a little salty,” Justin said with a smile. “He came down to see me play Georgia Tech in Atlanta, and he said, ‘Guess what, bro? I broke your record.’
“I said, ‘Yeah, yeah. I know, I know.’ But in seriousness, I was so happy for him. I always tell people that I want Brandon to be better than me. So that makes me smile.”
Justin and Brandon grew up not just as brothers, but as best friends. They’re used to always being by each other’s side. So the past two years — with Justin being at Monmouth and Brandon still at Eastside — have been an adjustment for the pair.
But even being 700 miles apart, the brothers are both paving their own unique basketball paths.
Justin, at Monmouth, is averaging 12.7 points a game on 49 percent shooting. He made headlines in November by taking his Hawks toe-to-toe with perennial power Syracuse in the Carrier Dome.
Monmouth lost that hard-fought game 78-73, but Justin caught eyes with a 25-point performance to lead all scorers.
“I was just able to take the open shots that my teammates created for me,” said Justin. “Thankfully, that night, almost all of them were going in.”
Justin’s not shy about it, either. He knows that his ceiling soars as high as he wants to take it. Marquee performances against storied programs in historic venues?
He’s had those visions since he was a kid.
“Honestly, those are the kinds of moments I’ve envisioned since I was young,” said Justin. “You never want to take those opportunities for granted. I walked into the [Carrier Dome], took a deep breath, and just focused on the people and the game in front of me.”
Justin has the same advice for Brandon, who now leads and stars for the same Eastside team he did.
“The biggest thing [Justin] always reminds me of is to stay grounded,” said Brandon. “Eventually, if I keep putting in the work, I’ll get to where I want to be. Everything will fall into place.”
It’s starting to do just that for Brandon, who averages 23 points a game, has his Eagles off to a 4-1 start, and is receiving plenty of attention from colleges as just a junior.
“I tell Brandon all the time, just to stay down. Stay confident. Be where you are,” said Justin. “We both know that nobody puts in the work like the two of us do. We’ve seen it in each other since we were kids. Eventually, that work is going to show itself.
“And I think for Brandon, it’s really starting to show.”
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