Joshua David Braun (born July 7, 1994)[1] is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Geraldton Buccaneers of the NBL1 West.
He played four years of college basketball for the Grand Canyon Antelopes, where he finished as the school's second all-time leading scorer and set the record for most career 3-pointers made.
[2] He put Boulder Creek's program on the map when he blocked a potential-game winning layup in the last second of the state championship game.
[3] As a sophomore in 2010–11, he averaged 20.2 points and 9.5 rebounds per game en route to being named player of the year in the Northwest Region.
[2] For his senior year of high school, Braun transferred to Westwind Preparatory Academy in Phoenix.
[5][6] Coming off two knee injuries to finish his high school career, Braun was left with just two college offers, one of them from Drake University.
[4] He later inquired at Grand Canyon University (GCU), despite the fact that the school was a Division II program at the time.
[7] However, Braun spent his first year at GCU as a redshirt[3][8] after suffering a torn meniscus in one of his surgically repaired knees while practicing with the team in the lead-up to the 2013–14 season.
[9] Braun made his debut for the Antelopes in the 2014–15 season and played power forward on a team that lacked rebounders.
[3] After playing sparingly over the first six games, an injury to a teammate saw Braun record 21 points and seven rebounds in 25 minutes on November 29 against Central Michigan.
[19][20] With GCU eligible for postseason play for the first time following their four-year Division I transition, the Antelopes entered the 2018 WAC tournament as the third seed and reached the championship game, where they lost 72–58 to New Mexico State.
[20] In the Antelopes' first-round loss to Mercer in the CBI tournament, Braun went scoreless on 0-of-7 shooting with five rebounds in 17 minutes in what was his final college game.
[22] For his career, Braun scored the second-most points (1,716) in the 69-season history of Grand Canyon basketball, ranking him behind only Bayard Forrest (2,195).
[26] In August 2018, Braun was on the verge of joining German club Karlsruhe Lions[27] when just days before he was set to leave Arizona, an equipment failure in the gym saw weights land on his foot and break some toes.
[28] In February 2019, Braun joined the Kalamunda Eastern Suns of the State Basketball League (SBL) in Australia.
[29][30] In the last training session prior to the Suns' regular-season finale on July 27 against the Joondalup Wolves,[29] Braun rolled his ankle and subsequently missed the 125–84 loss.
[31] The Suns narrowly made the playoffs with a 13–13 record and an eighth-place finish and had to take on the first-seeded Wolves in the quarterfinals without Braun.