Earlier this month, the Houston Rockets re-signed Amen Thompson to a five-year, $208 million contract extension. At the time, Amen became one of the first members of the 2023 NBA Draft class to secure his massive second NBA contract.
Two weeks later, his identical twin brother joined him.
Ausar Thompson and the Detroit Pistons have agreed to a five-year, $155 million fully guaranteed extension. Both new deals begin with the 2027-28 season, after the twins finish the final years of their rookie contracts.
Add them together, and the Thompson brothers just secured $363 million in new contracts.
More importantly, they made NBA history. Amen and Ausar are now the first pair of brothers in NBA history to each sign a contract worth at least $100 million.
Amen Thompson (L) and Ausar Thompson. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
It’s actually the second unusual piece of NBA history the twins have made together.
Amen and Ausar bypassed college to play for Overtime Elite, eventually winning a championship together with the City Reapers. At the 2023 NBA Draft, Houston selected Amen with the fourth overall pick. Detroit selected Ausar with the very next pick at #5.
That made them the first brothers since the NBA-ABA merger to both be selected among the top 10 picks in the same draft.
Their original rookie contracts were already worth approximately $40 million for Amen and $36 million for Ausar. When you add those deals to their new extensions, NBA teams have now committed roughly $439 million in contract value to the Thompson twins since draft night in 2023.
And unlike plenty of highly drafted prospects who receive extensions primarily because of potential, both Thompsons have already established themselves as elite defenders.
Ausar had a breakout 2025-26 season, leading the NBA with 2.0 steals per game. He finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting and earned a spot on the NBA All-Defensive First Team. He became the first Pistons player to earn First Team All-Defense honors since Ben Wallace two decades earlier.
Amen has developed into a much larger offensive weapon while providing similarly disruptive defense. Last season, he averaged career highs of 18.3 points, 7.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists, and 1.5 steals while playing an NBA-high 2,953 total minutes. He finished eighth in Defensive Player of the Year voting.
The progress of their teams has been almost as dramatic.
The Rockets won a combined 42 games during the two seasons before drafting Amen. They jumped to 41-41 during his rookie year, then went 52-30 in each of the following two seasons. Houston has now made consecutive playoff appearances after missing the postseason during the first three years of its post-James Harden rebuild.
Ausar arrived in Detroit under even uglier circumstances.
During his rookie season, the Pistons lost an NBA single-season record 28 consecutive games and finished 14-68. That was the low point of a five-year stretch in which Detroit never won more than 23 games.
The turnaround since then has been remarkable. Detroit improved to 44 wins and returned to the playoffs in 2024-25. Last season, the Pistons exploded to 60-22, the best record in the Eastern Conference. They reached the second round of the playoffs before losing Game 7 to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Ausar wasn’t solely responsible for that transformation, of course, but his defense has become an important part of one of the NBA’s best young teams.
And the same is true of Amen in Houston.
Perhaps the most remarkable part of the Thompson twins’ story is how closely their careers have continued to track one another. They were born on the same day, played high school basketball together, skipped college together, played for Overtime Elite together, won a championship together, and were selected with consecutive picks in the NBA Draft.
Three years later, they have now signed nine-figure extensions within two weeks of each other.
Amen’s contract is worth $53 million more than Ausar’s, so family bragging rights technically belong to him for now.
But collectively, the Thompson twins have secured $363 million in new money before their 24th birthdays — while becoming the first brothers in NBA history to each cross the $100 million contract threshold.
Not bad for two guys whose names were called about five minutes apart on draft night.