Picture Perfect
Dani Gariglio
11/4/2022
Most college seniors spend their final year on campus counting their lasts.
There’s the last first day of class, the last game day, the last time they’ll be in the same place as all their friends, and so on.
But for Anela Davis, a Davidson volleyball standout, her senior campaign has been marked more by firsts.
After all, it’s not every day you find out at 21 years old that you have a new sibling, let alone a sibling that has been playing in the NBA for the last four seasons.
Growing up as the middle child between her siblings Tre and Kiana, the trio has always had a tight-knit relationship, which is why Anela trusted her intuition last December when Kiana was acting “suspicious.”
She started digging.
“I finally just called her up to see what was going on and she said, ‘I have something I need to tell you, but I can’t tell you,’” Anela said.
While a back-and-forth of hints and joking around at what the news could be came next, Anela eventually confirmed with her sister that the Davis kids did in fact have another sibling.
“It was interesting,” she added. “But the way Kiana was acting made it seem like this was an even bigger deal, like there was a reason she couldn’t tell me specifically who it was.”
Then, the questions came quickly.
“Are they famous? Are they a celebrity?”
“Well, it depends on what you count that as,” Kiana replied.
“Is it an athlete?”
Silence.
Kiana caved and told her big sister to search through West Coast NBA rosters for the answer.
After combing through the Lakers’ roster first, Anela found herself looking through headshots of the Phoenix Suns.
One headshot stuck out to her at first, because it was in black and white while the rest were in color, but she kept scrolling.
“My first guess was Deandre Ayton,” she said laughing. “You know, because he’s a bigger dude.”
But after Kiana swiftly rejected that answer, and Anela continued to guess just about every other player on the roster, there was only one option left: the black and white headshot of Landry Shamet.
So she asked, “Is it Landry Shamet?”
Silence, again.
GETTING CONNECTED
On top of the initial shock of learning you have a new sibling, there was also an element of complexity and privacy to the situation Anela now found herself in.
“I was freaking out — this person I’ve probably seen on TV and watched before was related to me,” she said.
Since the Suns were already in the heart of their season, Anela decided that even though both Tre and Kiana had already exchanged messages with Landry, she would wait.
“I was holding out,” Anela admitted. “In my head I always thought, ‘I’m going to wait until the end of their season.’ This is a lot to deal with and process, and I wanted to give him space and be respectful, because I didn’t know how he wanted to handle things or if he even wanted a relationship.”
That’s how Anela wanted to handle things. But that all, “kind of got thrown out the window” rather quickly.
*Landry Shamet has requested to follow you*
“Y’all won’t believe what just happened,” read the text that Anela sent Tre and Kiana one morning.
After putting an emphasis on wanting Landry to make the first move on his own timeline, the window had opened.
“However much he wanted to interact, I would’ve been fine with any of that,” Anela said. “But when he followed me, I finally sent him a message. Like a weird introduction into who I am.”
What started as Instagram messages for a few weeks eventually turned into text messages, until the texts turned into the three Davis kids Facetiming their brother Landry for the first time.
“I’d never really heard his voice before that, so it was like, ‘Golly, that’s what he sounds like,’” said Anela, reliving the reality of it all. “Does he sound like me? It just made everything real, that guy exists, that guy that’s saying we’re related in my DMs.”
The first Facetime call went seamless for the now four siblings. The conversations rolled on, with no shortage of banter and jokes, as they shared stories about when they were younger.
“Everything just felt oddly normal, and it was cool to see how much of our lives paralleled each other’s from a distance, without knowing about him and him not knowing about us,” Anela shared.
STRIKINGLY SIMILAR
Landry Shamet was born in Kansas City, Mo. in 1997, just a few years before Anela, who was also born in Kansas City and spent the first three years of her life there. And while 1,165 miles separates where the Davises grew up in Jacksonville Beach and Landry’s hometown, all four kids grew up in single-parent households, were involved in sports from a young age and have incredibly strong family ties.
Even in terms of morals and values, there appeared to be striking similarities.
“That was the start of it all,” said Anela.
With how well the Facetime call had gone, the next “first” for the siblings was to finally meet in person. Although Anela still wanted to wait to figure things out in the postseason, the Suns’ success made it clear that Landry’s postseason wouldn’t be any time soon.
After a suggestion that they all meet when the Suns were in Orlando in March, Anela realized that this plan would pose challenges as she was in the middle of her spring season with Davidson volleyball and couldn’t really tell anyone what was going on.
“I had to try and figure out how to explain to my coaches and ask if I could leave, but not tell them why,” she stressed. “I couldn’t say, ‘Hey I just found out I had a brother… and he’s in the NBA.’ It was more like, ‘I just found out I have a brother and he has a really busy schedule; he’s going to be in Orlando, and it’s easier for us all to meet there.’”
With a guarded heart, Anela wasn’t ready to disclose hardly any of the details to anyone, including where she was heading when she left town because, “if things fell through, I didn’t want it to be a whole thing.”
When the Davis siblings eventually all made it to Orlando, the trio anxiously passed time in a nearby candy shop as they waited for Landry’s arrival. Anela was shaking, Kiana was pacing and Tre was constantly checking his phone.
“We’re trying to act normal like we’re not about to meet this dude we’ve never met before, who’s actually our brother, and then the text comes in and we all beeline out the door,” said Anela.
“I think I’m here,” it said.
As they watched Landry step out of the car, the surreality took over. Kiana grinned from ear to ear, Tre stared at a man who looked eerily similar to them and Anela was in awe of the entire setting.
“Here we are,” Landry said.
And all Anela could think is, “This guy is real. This guy is my brother. He actually wants to see us.”
JUST THE FOUR OF THEM
Since that day in March, Kiana, Tre, Anela and Landry have spent their days making up for lost time as a family.
“There’s no handbook for how to do any of this, and as cool as it is, there was still a lot of processing that was hard, hard to pick through, mainly that we had just missed out on so much time together,” Anela said.
This summer, the siblings spent time together in California and Arizona, visiting Landry and learning about his life, while fully immersing him into his new role as “big brother.”
With just one-way flights booked out west — because they weren’t sure when Landry would get fed up with his little sisters — Anela and Kiana ended up spending a combined four weeks with their brother.
“This summer was strictly about family,” a sentiment that Anela shared, and Landry echoed to Phoenix media during the NBA’s preseason this fall.
They spent the summer training together, cooking meals, walking Landry’s dog and hanging out at the beach. Anela even takes credit for teaching Landry how to play volleyball, while she gives him credit in return for showing her a new perspective heading into her senior season.
“It was funny because he got pretty good, but part of me thought, ‘If this guy can pick this up in two seconds, why can’t I show out in my last season?’” she said. “And it made me think about how a lot of people say senior year you either go out big or fizzle away a little bit, so it kind of helped me find a second wind, having the energy to keep going and having something to look forward to because this guy is watching me now in Arizona.
My brother is watching me now in Arizona. I feel like I have something to prove, someone new to play for. He’s never seen me play volleyball before; I have one season to show him what I can do.”
Anela has done just that, too, helping lead Davidson to its most successful season in over two decades, with three Atlantic 10 Conference honors, wins over Dayton and VCU, and the team fighting for the top spot in the league with two weeks left in the regular season. All of that while also etching her name across the Davidson volleyball record book.
“Landry has helped me grow a lot mentally and overall as a person, especially getting through this season with some mental blockage,” she shared. “He's my best friend, my rock, someone I look up to. He really helped me shape my outlook on everything. He taught me a lot about life in those few weeks this summer; how to value it and embrace it, with the good and the bad. ‘Everything is everything,’ that's what he says.”
For now, the siblings continue to take things one day at a time, especially as Landry and the Suns gear up for another shot at the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy and Anela has an A-10 title on her mind. They all Facetime frequently and have plans to reunite in December around the holidays, while Tre, Landry and Kiana have all surprised and visited Anela at one of her games this fall.
When she looks back on all the firsts this last year has brought her, particularly this summer, the words “free” and “peaceful” come to mind.
“It’s almost picture perfect,” she said. “Maybe part of it is a stretch to say that, but I would have never expected to have an older brother and for him to fit in as perfectly as he did with all of us. For him to come in and be accepting of all of it, and allow himself to step in and be that figure for all three of us as our big brother – it feels even more whole than it did when it was just the three of us.
