Inside the NBA’s Twin-flux – The Ringer

Ausar Thompson isn’t sure when the next matchup will take place, but the Detroit Pistons rookie already knows how he’ll defend it.

“He’s very fast, so his first thing is to [try to] get by you,” Thompson says of his opponent. If Thompson is quick enough to prevent the blow-by, his adversary will bump him—his go-to counter. And if Thompson shuts that off, his opponent will either change directions or hit him with a pull-up jump shot.

All players have their tendencies, and Thompson knows this one’s better than anyone. After all, the opponent in question has been Ausar’s greatest and most frequent competition for his entire life: his identical twin brother, Amen.

“He got philosophical with that one,” Amen says of Ausar’s scouting report. “I feel like that’s pretty accurate.”

“There’s no connection like it. It’s as close to telepathy as possible.” —Brook Lopez

Amen and Ausar, who in 2023 became the first twins selected in the top five of the same NBA draft, have had 21 years to study each other’s tendencies. Now, the rest of the NBA is getting up to speed. Ausar proved himself as one of the most promising defensive prospects in the league before a blood clot prematurely ended his rookie season in late March. (He is expected to make a full recovery before next year.) Amen, meanwhile, has been inserted into the Rockets’ starting lineup after Alperen Sengun’s injury, and he has averaged 15 points, 10 rebounds, and three assists in 11 games.

The Thompsons are playing on separate teams for the first time, but their profound understanding of each other remains. “[Ausar] knows me better than anybody,” Amen says. Whether it’s a backyard game of one-on-one or a Pistons-Rockets tilt, when the brothers face off, they tend to mirror each other’s movements, as if their brains are working in conjunction. That’s common for twins in the NBA—just ask Bucks center Brook Lopez, who has spent almost his entire 16-year career playing alongside or against his twin brother, Robin.

“There’s no connection like it,” Brook says. “It’s as close to telepathy as possible.”

When the Lopezes made their debuts in 2008, they became just the fifth set of twins to play in the NBA. Three-time All-Stars Tom and Dick Van Arsdale were the first, in the ’60s, and Horace and Harvey Grant notably followed with a successful run in the ’90s. But recently, the number of NBA twins has swelled. This season alone has featured six pairs: Amen and Ausar, Brook and Robin, Cody and Caleb Martin, Markieff and Marcus Morris, Keegan and Kris Murray, and Julian and Justin Champagnie. In total, twins represent roughly 2 percent of all NBA players this season, a record share for any North American professional sports league.

And the NBA has more twins on the way. Jazz rookie Taylor Hendricks’s twin brother, Tyler, plays basketball at Central Florida. Cooper Flagg, the nation’s top high school player, is a twin, as is Duke center Kyle Filipowski, a projected first-round pick, but their brothers aren’t as highly touted as they are. Longtime NBA veterans Matt Barnes and Eddie House are both raising twins who are making their way through the grassroots system, but it’s too early to gauge their pro prospects.

And then there are the brothers who could eventually be the center of basketball’s twinverse: Cameron and Cayden Boozer, the sons of former All-Star Carlos Boozer and two of the top 20 recruits in the 2025 class. Between Flagg next year and Cameron in 2026, it’s very plausible a twin could be selected at the top of back-to-back drafts.

Why has the NBA seen so many twins enter its ranks in recent years? Strong genes? The cooperative nature of the sport? One twin riding the coattails of the other? Is it all just a coincidence?

Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

The rise of NBA twins could be due in part to the increase in twin births nationwide. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the twin birth rate nearly doubled from 1980 through 2009, from 18.9 to 33.3 per 1,000 births. Counting two-way players, about one in every 41.5 NBA players is a twin, which puts the league roughly on par with the general population.

Compared to the NBA, though, twins are relatively scarce in the wider sports world. Herbert and Wilfred Baddeley won four Wimbledon doubles titles all the way back in the 1890s, and, more recently, Bob and Mike Bryan became the most successful doubles duo of all time. Football has had some notable pairs over the years, from the Barbers to the McCourtys to the Griffins to, most recently, Sydney and Chase Brown, who debuted in 2023. The WNBA had Heidi and Heather Burge in the late ’90s and Coco and Kelly Miller in the 2000s but has no active twins. In Major League Baseball, the only current twins are Taylor and Tyler Rogers, both relief pitchers for the San Francisco Giants. And the NHL has seen just six pairs of twins in its 107-year history, none of whom are active.

Why haven’t other pro leagues seen the same twin-flux as the NBA? Arkansas head coach Eric Musselman, who coached the Martin twins at Nevada, has a theory: “I just think [basketball is] the one sport that two guys can work on their game at the same time,” he says. “You can’t do that as a football player. You can go out and run sprints together, and wide receivers can run the same route patterns, but in basketball, those two guys can play one-on-one every day.”

That constant companionship creates a healthy sense of competition, and, indeed, every twin interviewed for this story said their brother has always been their biggest rival. The Lopezes recently poked fun at this dynamic in a State Farm commercial.

“As much as you love your brother, there’s always that competitiveness of, ‘I have to beat you in this,’” says Justin Champagnie, who’s currently playing on a two-way contract with the Wizards while his brother, Julian, has started 53 games for the Spurs.

Perhaps the best way to get better is to learn how to beat yourself, and going up against your twin might be the closest thing. Caleb Martin, who broke out in the Heat’s 2023 run to the Finals, says that the high level of familiarity between him and his brother has pushed him to expand his play. “I have to make shit up all the time,” Caleb says of his one-on-one bouts with Cody. “But it sharpens my game.”

Cody agrees. “[Being a twin] does help us because you just have to try new shit and try uncomfortable stuff,” the Hornets forward says. “It ended up working out for us in the long run. It just puts you at a different level.”

Other twins say their brotherly bond has forced them to develop new moves, additional counters, and, ultimately, more creativity in their play. Kris Murray, the 23rd pick in last year’s draft, says that going one-on-one against his identical twin brother, Keegan, has led him to take shots such as a one-legged leaner, a shot he’d never practice if he wasn’t going up against someone who knew his entire repertoire.

Eventually, there comes a time when those intra-family matchups take place in real games, but many twins try to stick together for as long as possible. Of the league’s six current pairs, four went to college together, and the Thompsons skipped college to play for Overtime Elite, the pro league for young adults. The Lopezes attended Stanford, the Murrays went to Iowa, and the Martins started together at North Carolina State before transferring to Nevada.

Markieff Morris, who likens twins to “a team within a team,” knew he wanted to play with his brother Marcus in college. The problem was Duke wanted only Marcus, and North Carolina wanted only Markieff, which led to two short conversations with Hall of Fame coaches Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams about the brothers’ intention to stick together. The brothers famously used the 2008 national title game between Kansas and Memphis to make their decision. The Jayhawks won and landed the twins.

The lone set of twins to attend different colleges? The Champagnies. Justin went to Pitt, while Julian stayed home to attend St. John’s, where their father played soccer.

“All through high school we told ourselves we wanted to go to school together,” Julian says. “Our parents wanted it. We wanted it. Our coaches, everybody wanted us to go to the same school.” But ultimately, when Justin fell in love with Pitt, Julian had to make a decision between playing at his top school or playing with his brother.

Sometimes, the best assist a twin can give the other is more exposure. Growing up, Caleb Martin was more of a scorer (and a better-heralded recruit) than his brother, Cody, who played more like a point guard. When the two were transferring from North Carolina State, Caleb was highly sought-after, while Cody says schools “were cool” getting him as well.

“[Being a twin] does help us because you just have to try new shit and try uncomfortable stuff. It just puts you at a different level.” —Cody Martin

“The recruiting process was pretty simple,” says Musselman, who ended up luring the Martins to Nevada. “I knew that everyone in the country was recruiting Caleb, and maybe people were willing to recruit Cody knowing that he was a solid player. … And we just flipped the script. We actually [thought] Cody [was] as valuable if not more valuable in what we [were] trying to do than Caleb.”

The constant comparison can be tricky for twins to navigate, especially in the college recruitment and NBA draft processes. Before the 2023 draft, Amen and Ausar Thompson told Mirin Fader they hate being pitted against each other. “We are individuals,” Amen said. “Obviously it’s the easiest thing to do, compare me to Amen,” Ausar echoed. “I try not to let people’s perception bother me.”

But it can also lead to comical moments. Fresh off a Final Four appearance with Oklahoma State in 2004, twins Stephen and Joey Graham declared for the NBA draft. Though they’re fraternal twins, they look alike, and many teams worked out both brothers together. There were times during predraft workouts when the Grahams’ likeness confused everyone else.

“We would have workouts where [Joey] would play against certain players, and then the next workout I would be going against the same players that he was just with,” says Stephen, who now works as a player development coach with the Nuggets. “And they’d be like, ‘Isn’t this the same guy?’ ‘No, I’m the twin brother.’ They knew, but they didn’t really know. It was just uniquely weird.”

If there’s one thing being a twin in the NBA doesn’t guarantee, it’s a similar career arc. Even identical twins typically end up with careers that are more fraternal. Brook and Robin Lopez stand out—literally—for their resemblance, but their games are distinct. Brook was an All-Star and 20-point-per-game scorer early in his career, and he has evolved into a stretch 5 and Defensive Player of the Year candidate with the Bucks. Robin, meanwhile, has been a career role player who has played for nine franchises, and he is known for being a good teammate and feuding with opposing mascots.

Photo by Chris WIlliams/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

The variation between the Lopezes is a by-product of two 7-footers’ attempts to coexist in the back-to-the-basket era. Brook says he played a lot of power forward in high school and AAU so that he could play alongside Robin, who tended to stay down low as a traditional big man. That dynamic persisted at Stanford, where the brothers continued to evolve in relation to each other. During their two seasons in college, Brook was seen as a scoring threat in the post with defensive limitations, while Robin was viewed as a rim protector without a post game.

Like the Lopezes, Markieff and Marcus Morris developed their games in tandem. “We can’t play together if we’re doing the same thing,” Marcus says. Even though both brothers were the same size growing up, Marcus took more of a guard’s role, while Markieff played more as a forward or center.

That’s been largely true of their NBA careers as well. Marcus is the better shooter and ball handler, while Markieff is more of a traditional forward. The two were able to play together in Phoenix from 2013 to 2015, which they joked were the best years of their lives. Despite the variations in their skill sets, the Morrises buck the enduring trend that one twin tends to be significantly better than the other; Marcus’s career player efficiency rating is 13.2, and Markieff’s is 13.5.

Twins who aren’t the same size can have even more divergent careers.

The Graham brothers say they had similar skill sets growing up, but by the time they got to college, Joey had grown to 6-foot-8 while his brother was just 6-foot-5. “I got the mutated genes,” Joey jokes. During Oklahoma State’s run to the Final Four, Joey was one of the Cowboys’ go-to scorers, often operating from the post, and Stephen was more of a rotation guard. In the 2005 draft, Joey was taken 16th by the Raptors, while Stephen went undrafted before eventually carving out a six-year NBA career.

The Grahams also typify an interesting dynamic twins face once they make the NBA. Before a 2010 regular-season game against the Nuggets, Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown posed a simple question for his Charlotte Bobcats: “How do we guard Joey Graham?”

A brief silence followed in the locker room before someone responded, “Just ask his twin brother.”

Stephen proceeded to give his teammates a cheat sheet.

“I felt like I was snitching,” he says. “But I was his opponent.”

This is an ethical dilemma all twins have confronted. It’s one thing to exploit your brother’s weaknesses playing one-on-one, but it’s another to weaponize them in a professional game. Every set of twins has a different approach to handling this.

“It’s fair game,” Justin Champagnie says. “I don’t give them too much on him. Just the basics. He can shoot. If you let him shoot, he will continue to knock down shots, you know? I don’t give too much. I still want him to succeed and do his thing.”

Meanwhile, the Morris twins, known for their toughness, said their teammates know better than to ask for advice guarding the other.

Both the Thompsons and Murrays are confronting the issue during their first seasons as NBA twins. Before the Trail Blazers’ first game against Keegan Murray’s Kings, Kris deferred to his coaching staff to scout his brother. And on New Year’s Day, the first time the Thompson twins played against each other as pros, a Rockets assistant told Amen he would be guarding his twin. That helped him avoid any moral dilemmas. Besides, Amen said, “I didn’t want to expose him too much.”

Ausar had other plans. “I’m snitching on him,” Ausar said.

When Carlos Boozer learned he and his then-wife, CeCe, were expecting twins, he didn’t seek advice from Jarron Collins, his former teammate, or the other twins in his life. There were bigger things at stake.

The couple’s older son, Carmani, was born with sickle cell anemia, and doctors believed the twins, who came from a sickle cell–free egg, could provide a cure. According to Every Shot Counts, Boozer’s 2023 memoir, minutes after Cameron and Cayden joined the family, Cayden’s umbilical cord was frozen and later used in a blood transplant for Carmani. Today, Carmani is healthy and planning to attend Mississippi Valley State University on a baseball scholarship. Maybe it’s fitting that Cayden became a point guard—his first assist was his most important.

“They’re literally blood brothers,” Carlos said. “[Cayden’s] blood is running through [Carmani’s] body now instead of the blood cells he was born with.”

Over time, Carlos came to learn about the dynamics of twins.

“When you go into it, you think they’re going to wake up at the same time and go to sleep at the same time. No, it’s opposite,” Carlos says. “One will be up; the other one will be knocked out. One will be hungry; the other will be asleep. We were up every hour because they were on opposite timetables.”

While Carlos says his sons have different personalities, he agrees with Brook Lopez’s point about twin “telepathy.”

“They seem like they’re about to be the next set of twins.” —Ausar Thompson on the Boozer twins

“They can finish each other’s sentences. They know what the other one is thinking. That’s why they have such great chemistry on the court as well, because they have a best friend in each other,” Carlos says.

Cameron is a 6-foot-9 forward who has drawn comparisons to Chris Webber, while Cayden is 6-foot-3 and more of a facilitator. “They have similarities in their actual game on the court, but I just think their overall game is different than most twins,” says Andrew Moran, who coaches the Boozers at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami and is a father of twins himself. He hasn’t encountered any of the difficulties that twins such as Brook and Robin or Amen and Ausar might have faced trying to play together with overlapping skill sets. “The other twins that I think were the same position, it was harder for them to coexist, whereas these guys play multiple positions.”

That’s partly the result of a concerted effort on their dad’s part, in response to an evolving NBA. “I raised both of them to be guards,” Carlos said. “I wanted them to have guard skills. That’s just where the flow of the game has gone. You have to be able to do multiple things.”

“They’re interchangeable,” he says.

Both Cameron and Cayden are ranked in the top 20 in their recruiting class. Much like their twin predecessors, they plan to play together in college, and they’ve already visited Miami, Kentucky, Florida, and Duke, where their dad led the Blue Devils to the 2001 national title.

“They seem like they’re about to be the next set of twins,” Ausar Thompson says. “Their IQ is so high. They know where each other is going to be on the court.”

“I think my kids have a chance to be better than me,” Carlos says. “I know I accomplished a great deal in my basketball career—gold medal, All-Star appearances. I think they have a chance to accomplish all of that and much more.”

If the elder Boozer is right, his sons will owe their success, at least in some small way, to each other. The constant playing companion, the brotherly competition, and the complementary skill sets are the marks of all NBA twins before them. That isn’t to say Cameron and Cayden wouldn’t be successful on their own—and if they do both make the NBA, they’ll create a new category as twins of a former player.

“They’ve been in each other’s lives since the womb, so they have a different level of connection,” Carlos Boozer says. “And it shows in everything they do.”

Alex Schiffer spent the past four years covering one of the NBA’s greatest what-ifs, the Brooklyn Nets, for The Athletic. He currently covers sports business for Front Office Sports.

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Publish date : 2024-04-03 07:00:00

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