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Growing up, Ausar Thompson wanted nothing more than to beat his older brother at basketball. It irked him that he couldn’t. It motivated him every day. His twin brother, Amen, would be moved to tears when he didn’t win, especially as the games became more competitive as he got older.
“First off, he was bigger,” Amen Thompson said. “So don’t give him too much credit, he was bigger than us. But he was tough, one of the hardest dudes I’ve ever had to guard.”
Most people are familiar with the twins — Ausar and Amen — but few know their older brother, Troy, who, more or less, was the boss at the end of the video game for his little brothers.
“We started playing two-on-one and we still couldn’t beat Troy, not until we were like 13 or something,” Ausar Thompson told The Athletic. “At 13 or 14, we started winning on our own.
“We weren’t bad at basketball. We were good at 13. Growing up, though, we couldn’t beat him one-on-one. Now, it’s still competitive, but he can’t beat us. He can hold his own. He’s a knockdown shooter, a shot-maker. He’s the J.R. Smith of HBCUs.”
The Thompson twins, Amen and Ausar, were on the NBA’s radar for several years before they were officially handpicked to join the exclusive club in June’s NBA Draft. Amen went No. 4 to the Houston Rockets, while Ausar was picked right after by the Detroit Pistons. They became the first twins in league history to be selected in the top 5 of the NBA Draft. Troy Thompson Jr., who is eight years their senior, played college basketball — first at the City College of San Francisco and then at Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
For years, Troy was the twins’ biggest rival, even more than one another. He was also their biggest fans, one of their biggest sources of support.
On Jan. 1 in Houston, Amen and Ausar will face one another for the first time in their NBA careers, after years of being teammates in an official setting. For the Thompson family, in particular Troy, it’s a moment that has been culminating for a lifetime.
“I always knew that they were going to the NBA,” Troy told The Athletic. “But then when you’re in the situation and know it’s happening, it’s almost like countdown. You’re super vulnerable. Next thing you know, my brother (Amen) gets drafted to the Rockets and I see him walking up to the stage and I take a look over at Ausar and see his eyes.
“It’s an intense experience.”
Amen Thompson, left, and Ausar Thompson just prior to the first round of the 2023 NBA Draft. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
And as both Ausar and Amen prepare for this full-circle moment, it’s impossible for either one not to think about how they got here without emphasizing the impact Troy had on it all.
“Without him, I don’t know if I’d like basketball as much as I did growing up,” Ausar said. “Troy always believed in us … ever since I was little, he always thought we were the greatest basketball players at our age that he had ever seen. He just didn’t think we could beat him. Having someone, and even my whole family, who believes in you like that, it makes you believe and keep going.”
“I call him the prototype,” Amen said. “He went through stuff growing up in Oakland that I never had to deal with because he and my parents guided me away from that stuff. There are so many kids I’ve seen that were like his friends, basketball teammates that just went down the wrong path. He never went down the wrong path and always made sure to be a good role model to his little brothers. I feel like that played a big part in my life in general, I wasn’t focused on anything but basketball, family and school.”
The house that the Thompson twins grew up in wasn’t big enough for everyone to have their own room. The twins had a bunk bed nestled up against a wall on one side, and on the other side, was a single bed, where Troy slept. Sometimes, the brothers would switch it up — maybe Troy was on the bottom bunk one night, while Amen would take the top bunk and Ausar would get the single bed.
Despite the age difference, all three brothers were as thick as thieves. They’d stay up and watch basketball. They’d argue about which players were better. Amen and Ausar gravitated toward two-way players, such as LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard and Kobe Bryant. Troy was a fan of the scorers, the James Hardens of the world. That was often the topic of a lot of arguments.
“That’s probably why it hurt so much to lose to Troy,” Ausar said. “I was still a fan of those players, but I didn’t give them as much love as the others.”
When the trio of siblings weren’t going back and forth about basketball, they were listening to music. Troy, the oldest and the only one with a cellphone at the time, got to dictate what the brothers listened to. There was a lot of J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar and Drake thumping throughout the walls of the Thompson household. Kanye West, Frank Ocean and The Weeknd got a lot of spin, too. And, naturally, those are the artists Ausar and Amen listen to today.
“He was really subconsciously putting me on, and that influenced my music taste going forward,” Amen said. “Those are some of my favorites.”
However, basketball consumed much of the relationship between the three brothers. When they all lived at home, until Troy went away for college, the days consisted of two-on-one games, shooting drills, many games of 21 and trips to a nearby fitness center to play five-on-five.
The brothers, more often than not, were on the same team when they played against others in the area. Ausar and Amen, though, preferred to not be on the same team as Troy.
“We wanted to beat him, and he’d never pass the ball,” Ausar said. “Troy is a big believer in being a ‘shooting’ guard. He’ll pass it only when he has to pass it.”
By the time Troy left for college, both Amen and Ausar were starting to morph into the players we see today. They were able to hold their own, finally, against their big brother in a one-on-one setting. But, because Troy was going off to school, they didn’t get to relish in the fact that, in their minds, they’d reached the top of the mountain.
When Troy left, the twins started to turn their attention to one another. Troy’s departure is what fueled the rivalry between the two at home.
“Competing against Troy, going up against him so much, it was so competitive,” Ausar said. “We’d cry if we lost. So, when he left and went to college, I still wanted to compete, so I’d play one-on-one against Amen. Now, that one was way too aggressive, though. That made me miss my older brother. Amen was trying to fight. If he lost and he didn’t get to play again, he was trying to fight.”
It was difficult for Ausar Thompson (0) and Amen Thompson (1) to play each other without older brother Troy. (Dale Zanine/USA Today)
While Troy was away at college, Amen and Ausar talked to him regularly but would only see him in the offseason or during the holidays. The brothers never went to watch Troy play in person while he was at Prairie View A&M, but they always kept tabs on the games.
“I didn’t have a phone but I would ask my mom and dad for their phone,” Amen said. “There was like a SWAC livestream thing going on so I would try to watch it like that. Every time his game was on ESPN I would be checking his boxscore after every half. I was always trying to keep up with his games, even when we were far away from each other.”
As Troy was finishing up his college career, Amen and Ausar were embarking on their own journey through basketball. The family moved from California to Florida and the twins attended high school at Pine Crest in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Troy was far away, but he’d keep track of how his brothers were doing. It wasn’t until the twins’ junior year of high school that Troy was able to be around more in person, and that’s when the competitive relationship evolved into a mentorship.
“On YouTube, my dad has an account of every game my brothers have played in,” Troy said. “So I would watch their games that way. I wouldn’t really talk to them about it, I would just be watching it, amazed with how dominant they were. I remember when I first left and went to Prairie View, the first game of the season, my dad texted me and said Ausar had 50 points and Amen had 30. They kept growing, it was crazy to see.”
From that point on, through the twins’ journey through Overtime Elite after high school and into the NBA, Troy has been the background and has watched his brothers at every turn. After games, Ausar will come back to the locker room and see messages from Troy. Sometimes they’ll talk on the phone.
“After every game, he’d have something to say,” Ausar said. “Even now, he talks to me after. We have discussions about stuff and more often than not I’d be like, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’”
The same goes for Amen, who has only played in a handful of games this season due to an ankle injury.
“He tells me to let go and let God,” Amen said. “That’s helped with the injury, control what I can control.”
The twins have relied heavily on Troy’s words over the years, particularly when it comes to basketball, but also as it pertains to maturity and character. Having had the privilege of a front-row seat to Troy’s life, often the best teachers are the ones you’re closest to. Shared experiences, similar traits.
“I think he has a really good basketball IQ in general of an unselfish player (who wants) to be great,” Amen said. “He understands me more than anybody probably does. He’s given me so much advice through thousands of games I’ve played in my life. I can’t give pieces but he tells me, ‘Walk like the man I desire to be’ and I really hold on to that because I want to be the best, so I walk like that.”
Ausar and Amen are very close, for obvious reasons. They are living apart from one another for the first time in their lives, yet if the twins don’t talk to each other on the phone five or so times per day, it’s weird. However, Troy is there in the equation, too. The three brothers have a group chat via text that is always going off. They also have a group chat on Instagram to send one another memes and highlights. Ausar said he talks to Troy on the phone every other day or “every other other day.”
From Day 1, Ausar and Amen have always had each other. There’s always been a shoulder to lean on, someone to talk to. If Ausar went through something for the first time, the odds are Amen did, too. And vice versa. Like many other things in their lives, their dreams were also shared.
Yet, for Ausar and Amen, those dreams likely wouldn’t be there without Troy — the brother whose love for basketball transferred to them, the brother who had basketball aspirations of his own, the brother who used basketball to get out of Oakland and earn a college degree.
The other Thompson brother, the one you might not have heard of, plays a big part in this unique story.
“It’s amazing for me,” Troy said. “I know what they’re made of and I know what their intentions are for the game.”
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos courtesy of the Thompson family)
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