THE DAY AFTER the visiting Denver Nuggets ended the Houston Rockets' nine-game winning streak in late March, Amen Thompson stepped in front of his teammates at the team's newly opened 75,000-square-foot training facility.
Finally, it was his turn in the team-bonding exercise: Tell your life story in five minutes.
"Everybody goes over the time," Thompson told ESPN.
He couldn't help it.
Spinning essentially the same two narratives into one as the Rockets leaned in closely to listen, the soft-spoken Thompson explained how the young man before them had grown up in the Oakland, California, area with an ultra-competitive identical twin brother, Ausar Thompson, born a minute later, in a supportive family that played an integral role in manifesting dreams jotted down on a family vision board as 9-year-olds.