The 2023 NBA Draft has finally concluded and the picks are in. Fifty-eight basketball players have been anointed with the prestigious title of ‘NBA player’. All of these players come from far and wide in the United States and even other nations like France.
Unless they come from the same university, taking the example of Dereck Lively II and Dariq Whitehead, most of the players would be unfamiliar with each other on a personal level.
They are Thompson Twins, Ausar, and Amen Thompson. Picked back to back as the 4th and 5th picks in the NBA draft, the twins made history as the first pair of siblings to be picked at the top of an NBA draft. It must be a surreal feeling for both brothers and their families as it’s quite an astronomical achievement to have 2 athletes from the same family become NBA professionals.
Ausar and Amen Thompson are the 5th pair of twins to join the NBA
And they may be the most skilled twins to ever set foot in the NBA. Ausar and Amen were picked back to in the top 5 of the draft, with Amen going 4rth to the Houston Rockets and Ausar going next to the Detroit Pistons. There has never been another set of twins as highly rated as the Thompson twins, the second closest being the Lopez twins and that load is mostly shouldered by Brooklyn Nets‘ all-time leading scorer Brook Lopez.
The Thompson twins are the 5th pair of twins to make the NBA – joining the Morris twins, Martin twins, Lopez twins, and Champagnie twins. pic.twitter.com/gKpsz0sXZU
— Basketball Forever (@bballforever_) June 23, 2023
The other twins drafted into the NBA are the aforementioned Lopez twins Brook and Robin, the Martin twins, Caleb and Cody, the Morris twins, Marcus and Markieff, and finally the Champagnie twins, Julian and Justin.
Out of these sets, the only notable names are Caleb Martin and Brook Lopez. Caleb Martin recently was an impact player for the Miami Heat and almost single-handedly won them Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics.
Ausar and Amen have an insane ceiling in terms of potential, and they could be the greatest sibling duo to ever touch the NBA floor. Amen, maybe starting in a better position due to him joining a younger stacked Rockets team, contrasting to Ausar joining a Detroit Pistons squad that features the lower-rated but still star-level players Jaden Ivey and Cade Cunningham.