Editor’s Note: Read more NBA coverage from The Athletic here. The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA or its teams.
***
Almost as soon as he got home to Florida, after his pursuit to make the G League’s Stockton Kings came to an end, Troy Thompson Jr. offered a revelation to his twin 16-year-old brothers.
“I told them,” he said, “ ‘You guys are definitely going to the league, and you guys are gonna be top picks. Because you’re better than these guys right now.’”
Troy Jr. earned a G League camp invite from a local tryout back in 2019 and believed he did enough to make the team. He tore his quadriceps and eventually got waived. But before the injury, he felt good about his chances. And he took it as a good sign that he was put in a room with Gabe Vincent, now a Los Angeles Laker.
But he played well enough to be absolutely certain about his little brothers’ chances. Playing against G Leaguers, measuring what that level offered, told him all he needed to know.
Amen and Ausar Thompson were going to the NBA.
This wasn’t revelation, actually. More confirmation. Because Troy Jr. declared as much for years. Everywhere he went, he heralded the greatness of his little brothers like a prophecy. In musty local gyms for their CYO games. At the park where kids gathered for runs on sunny Bay Area afternoons. At his own high school basketball practices, when they were just rascals running around.
“He used to always talk about Amen and Ausar,” said Karega Hart, head boys’ basketball coach at Oakland Technical High School. “And we used to be like, ‘Man, shut up.’ He’s like, ‘Man, my little brothers, they got it. They’re going to the league.’ But they’re 9, 10 years old. They are young. He’s like, ‘No. I’m telling you. They don’t lose.’ ”
The prophecy continued when Troy Jr. played JUCO ball at City College of San Francisco. When he transferred to the Division I level at Prairie View A&M in Texas. And when the family moved to Florida so the twins could play at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, making varsity as eighth graders. And when they joined Overtime Elite Academy in Atlanta.
Troy Jr., who is eight years older, remained as consistent as he was certain. Nobody believed him, he says. But vindication came when they were drafted in 2023, Amen No. 4 to the Houston Rockets and Ausar No. 5 to the Detroit Pistons. They face off on Friday as budding stars at the core of NBA contenders.
Troy Jr.’s belief wasn’t typical familial hubris. This birthed from proximity to greatness as it brewed. Amen and Ausar shared a bedroom with Troy Jr. until he left for college. He watched his parents till the ground of their mind and the dream get planted like a seed. And Troy Jr. helped water them, put them in the proper amount of sunlight. He believed because he witnessed their obsession, their determination, their growth.
“He used to always tell us when we were little kids, we were the best players he’d ever seen,” Amen said. “And I’m like, ‘There’s no way.’ But he would tell us that for real, and he was dead serious.”
And a wonderful thing happened in the process. His belief fueled theirs. His conviction nurtured them.
“I feel like, as a little kid, it puts so much belief in you,” Ausar said. “My whole family did, but he would always tell his friends that we were going to the league. And he would tell us, ‘This is what you gotta do.’ He was trying to put us on game so much, so early about little things. … When someone you look up to believes in you like that, it makes you believe in yourself more.”
That’s the immeasurable value of a big brother. The blueprint for what’s possible. Troy Jr. was old enough to see farther, but young enough to be tangible. Before teachers and coaches weighed in, before scouting reports and expert analysis could articulate their value, Amen and Ausar had their big brother. He paved the way. He showed them how to carry themselves, how to compete, how to bounce back from failure without quitting. He filled in the spaces their parents couldn’t reach.
An older brother can become a compass, guiding his younger siblings as they navigate who they are and who they may become. And be the biggest cheerleader.
Now that they’re here, carrying out the dreams they once illustrated on vision boards and whispered about together past bedtime, Troy Jr. can’t help but swell with pride. Because they did it.
“He was their first idol because, like, you know, he’s playing,” their father said, ”We’d go to the games. They got to watch him play. I think that helped to develop the dream because you want to be like him.”
When they were younger, the twins teamed up and played against their older brother. Those battles were about survival. Amen and Ausar — not yet close to the 6-foot-7, 200 pounds they’d become and still in the early stages of their eye-popping athleticism — swarmed Troy Jr. with desperation. It was to no avail against big bro, well on his way to being a 6-foot-4 guard.
As their father described it, they were like two Chris Pauls trying to stop Victor Wembanyama. Troy Jr. torched his brothers with uncontested jumpers, blocked their shots and bullied them in the post. Though results were inevitable, their mettle was being forged.
“Our whole life, we played defense,” Ausar said. “We were a team that picked up full court every play. That’s what me and my brother do. So we’d be playing him, thinking, you know, it’s just like playing other dudes. But he would do stuff like dribble, (forearm), pull up. Bump you, pull up. We’re like, ‘That’s a foul!’ But the mentality you gotta have, to just go kill anybody in front of you, that’s how he would teach us.”
The origins make sense watching them play now. Both stepped onto the court looking to impose. Their play is an explosion of athleticism, energy and hunger.
Amen jumps off the screen with the way he attacks. Constantly. Punishing teams with the ball in his hands, using his speed to knife through defenses on a mission to the rim. Ausar’s game feels more measured, controlled. His expertise, timing and discipline, cutting at the right time with purpose, locking up guards and wings with patience.
They both live for defense. They want all the proverbial smoke. Amen didn’t flinch in his matchup against Steph Curry, even in last season’s playoffs. Ausar is the point of attack on the league’s No. 2-ranked defense and would be offended if he wasn’t matched up with the opponent’s best perimeter player.
They share the same foundation. Effort-first basketball. Take every possession like a personal affront. And if it goes there, then it goes there. Amen.
Bigs, guards, switches, who cares? They don’t duck matchups. They hunt them. They lean into the battle, like they had to against Troy Jr. But now they’re big, with Ausar slightly bigger. Their athleticism is elite in a league of athletes.
They can jump with any of the game’s top leapers. They have a motor fueled by an endless well of energy. They’re quick enough to stick with quick guards. They’ve gotten strong to initiate physicality and hold their own. Intensity is a family staple.
“The last time I played Ausar, I said, ‘I’m never playing him again,’” Troy Jr. said. “It’s just too physical. But the last time I played Amen, I won three games out of five. This was their second year at OTE. They were 19.
“I’m never playing Ausar in a basketball game again. He’s too strong, way too strong. And he wants you to know that he’s too strong.”
The growth of Amen and Ausar Thompson may not have happened without older brother Troy Jr.
Troy Jr. knows something about battling against players too strong. He did it in high school. Height in the Oakland Athletic League is a scarcity. Anything over 6 feet threatens to land you in the post. Thompson was a guard who could shoot but a late-bloomer athletically. The team had plenty of guards, most under 6 feet. So naturally, in his wiry 6-foot-2 frame at the time, Troy Jr. had to man the post.
That was Troy’s story at Oakland Tech. Ausar said he just assumed Troy was a center.
“Troy was a baller,” Hart, his former coach, said. “He made second team all-league, played varsity for two years, junior and senior year. He was going to bounce after his junior year just because we got into it at the end of the year. Just one of those things. We didn’t have any real size, and he was one of the taller guys. So, he had to guard the big.”
Troy’s junior season was spent in the post, battling against bigger and stronger players. Taking one for the team. But in the summer before his senior season, he got in the weight room and worked on his game.
That’s another example he set, honoring the craft of hoop. Troy Jr. could’ve changed schools, found a team with a big man or found a new coach. But he stuck it out with Tech and Hart. His game took off. The strength worked wonders for his game. His enhanced skills made him one of the better players in the league.
“I think I saw him get his first dunk in the game,” Amen said. “He didn’t have bounce like me.”
Basketball in Oakland, at the high school level, is a vibe. The community shows up. With only six high schools, every conference game is an intense rivalry still relevant to the audience of locals. Those Oakland Athletic League games carry a significance greater than the final score. That’s especially true at Oakland Tech. Troy Jr. played his high school games in front of Marshawn Lynch and Josh Johnson, of NFL fame, who once wore the same colors. Ditto for Mistah FAB, a reputed hip-hop star and community figure. And if Oakland High is the opponent, Damian Lillard might show up.
So Troy Jr.’s high school games had some sizzle. And the players on the court become stars in their own local right. Especially for the 10-year-olds watching, getting up shots at halftime. The twins watched their brother play up close before they got hooked on LeBron James.
“Those were like NBA guys to me,” Amen said, remembering his preadolescent days watching his older brother’s high school team. “I’m trying to be as good as that.”
When Troy Jr. got to junior college and came off the bench as a scorer, he needed to grow more.
He remembers one stretch of repeated jabs at his game. At City College of San Francisco, the coach pulled him from a shooting drill so he could work on his passing. By himself, against the wall. Then, what felt like the next day, one of his brothers said he dribbled like a center. That stung for a lifelong combo guard. Then, during another practice soon after the brotherly barb, the San Francisco coach yelled for him to get the ball to a guard during a transition play.
Oh, no. The disrespect would have to stop.
Troy went to work. Quietly, consistently, he worked on his handling, his shiftingness, his off-the-dribble game. He had the shot. His NBA brothers can’t shoot like him. But he was tired of being deterred from his true position.
So you can imagine the satisfaction, the sense of accomplishment, when he was playing with his brothers at OTE, and they compared his game to CJ McCollum. He no longer dribbled like a center.
“Because of what we learned from Troy, we straight up trained Amen and Ausar to be guards from the beginning,” Troy Sr. said. “So everything was ballhandling, even though they were big. We played them like two, three years above their age, so nobody could put them at forward or center. They were small and skinny (when they played up), so they had to play guard.”
All the lessons he learned on his journey — from winning a JUCO state championship to playing Division I at Prairie View A&M — he poured back into the twins. And, eventually, it became his turn to watch them. Witness his prophecy unfold.
The inevitability in his mind didn’t rob the joy of watching in real time. His brothers are burgeoning stars. They have the potential for All-Stars, championships, even MVPs. He lives vicariously through their success.
“It’s really a beautiful thing to see. Everything kind of starts with intention and belief,” Troy Jr. said.
His 5-month-old daughter coos behind his voice.
“She’s gonna be the next Juju Watkins.”
Probably shouldn’t doubt him.
***
Marcus Thompson II is a lead columnist at The Athletic. He is a prominent voice in the Bay Area sports scene after 18 years with Bay Area News Group, including 10 seasons covering the Warriors and four as a columnist. Marcus is also the author of the best-selling biography “GOLDEN: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry.” Follow Marcus on Twitter @thompsonscribe
