Indulge for a second in a brief history of condiments in basketball. For the older generation, you might start with Hot Sauce, the And1 Mixtape legend whose exploits predated YouTube. Then there was O.J. Mayo, who starred in the prep ranks in the years before social media revolutionized how fans consume highlights. And today, Amen and Ausar Thompson, identical twins and future NBA draft picks, are bickering over yellow mustard—more specifically, its application.
It’s late January in Atlanta, and the 19-year-old brothers are eating lunch in a small, spartan meeting room in Overtime Elite’s 103,000 square-foot, state-of-the-moment basketball facility. The twins wear their hair the same, and apart from some slight facial differences, they’re hard to distinguish off the court. But on this particular day, they’re kind enough to show up in different clothes: Amen with a red Atlanta Hawks T-shirt, Ausar donning a black hoodie.
Having a twin has its benefits: an inescapable support system, a life teammate, so to speak. But for the Thompsons, who in the past two years have gone from little-known prospects to industry trailblazers to lottery-level talents, that has also meant constant competition, including the central conflict of the moment: Whose sandwich was better?
