Julian Newman

Julian Newman (born September 6, 2001) is an American college basketball player for the Bethesda Lion Angels of the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA). He graduated from Prodigy Prep in Orlando, Florida, in 2020. He stands and plays the point guard position.

Middle school In the fall of 2012, after initially attending public schools, Newman transferred to Downey Christian School, a small private school in Orlando, Florida, after his father began coaching basketball and teaching history at the school. As a fifth grader, he began playing basketball for the middle school team. But after seeing immediate success, scoring as many as 91 points in a game, he was promoted to the varsity team. An 11-year-old point guard, Newman stood and weighed 70 pounds. Despite wearing the smallest available uniform, he had to tighten the shoulders of his jersey with a hair tie and roll the waistband of his shorts to prevent them from falling off.

In sixth grade, Newman averaged 17 points per game. On December 19, 2012, Newman featured in an article on high school sports website MaxPreps, titled, "Fifth grader starting for Florida varsity team." A highlight video of Newman posted to YouTube by recruiting website ScoutsFocus went viral, receiving over 3.5 million views. He soon began making national headlines, including in Sports Illustrated and The New York Times, for being a fifth grader playing varsity basketball. He was also invited to perform at half-time during an Orlando Magic NBA game.

In December 2013, Newman was tabbed "The Best Sixth Grade Basketball Player You've Ever Seen" by The Huffington Post. By that time, he was averaging 13.6 points and 10.5 assists per game. In 2014, he was labeled by the Tampa Bay Times as "the most marketed 12-year-old basketball player in the world". As a seventh grader in 2015, Newman became the youngest player to record 1,000 career varsity points. He finished the 2014–15 season averaging 19.8 points, 10.2 assists, and 3.2 steals per game. On October 4, 2016, Newman scored 52 points in a highly publicized match-up with top 2020 class recruit Kyree Walker at the MiddleSchoolHoopsTV camp. His highlight video from the game received over 13 million views on YouTube.

High school By 2018, when he was a sophomore in high school, Newman had recorded 3,873 total points, surpassing the Florida prep record set by Teddy Dupay in 1998. In the 2018–19 season, he averaged 34.7 points, seven assists, five rebounds, and four steals per game, though Downey Christian finished the year with a 19–26 record.

As Newman entered his final years of high school, evaluators increasingly questioned whether his game would translate to higher levels of competition. At 5-foot-7 and about 140 pounds, he was undersized relative to Division I guards, and recruiters were reportedly wary of his tendency to shoot on roughly half of his team's offensive possessions, a habit he had carried since middle school. Newman himself later described more limited interest, saying that during his junior year he had drawn attention from in-state programs including UTSA, USF, and UCF, alongside discussions about playing professionally overseas that ultimately did not materialize.

Newman returned for a sophomore season in 2025–26, switching from jersey No. 2 to No. 4. Ahead of the season, his father Jamie Newman was hired as Bethesda's head women's basketball coach.

Personal life Newman is of Puerto Rican descent through his mother and of African American and Jewish descent through his father. His mother, Vivian Gonzalez, played point guard for University High School in Orlando, Florida, before serving four years in the United States Navy and later working for the United States Postal Service. She was reportedly recruited by the Miami Hurricanes when she was only nine years old.

In 2015, Newman began starring in his own documentary series, "Born Ready," uploaded by YouTube channel Elite Mixtapes. Newman and his family also feature in the reality show "Hello Newmans," launched by sports network Overtime in 2019 on YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.

Newman is also associated with his family's sports apparel brand Prodigy. Brand merchandise has been sold at his games.

Boxing Alongside his basketball career, Newman has competed in several exhibition boxing matches as part of livestreamer Adin Ross's "Brand Risk" crossover boxing event series. He defeated fellow competitor Gio Wise at a Brand Risk event in 2025, after which a post-fight confrontation broke out between Newman and rival streamer Oblivion.

That rivalry led to an official three-round exhibition bout between Newman and Oblivion, headlining Brand Risk 10 in Tennessee on October 3, 2025. Newman won the bout by unanimous decision.