Las Vegas News Bureau
Jackson State Tigers guard Tristan Jarrett (4) defends UNLV Rebels guard Amauri Hardy (3) during their NCAA basketball game Tuesday, November 26, 2019, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. (Sam Morris/Las Vegas News Bureau)
Thursday, Dec. 26, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Three words are forever ingrained in the back of Amauri Hardy’s mind. Many of his childhood memories center on trips to the gym alongside his father, Ramsey and younger brother, Jaden. As far back as elementary school, Ramsey would run Amauri through basketball drills while the toddler-size Jaden mimicked the action in the background.
“He’s watching you,” Amauri remembers his father telling him repeatedly.
As it turns out, those sessions on suburban courts outside Detroit set the stage for the current state of Las Vegas basketball. Twenty-one-year-old Amauri and 17-year-old Jaden are the biggest hoops stars in the Valley at their respective levels.
Amauri, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound junior guard at UNLV, has been a bright spot in coach T.J. Otzelberger’s first season, leading the Rebels in scoring at 17 points per game. Jaden, a 6-foot-4, 190-pound junior guard at Coronado High, is one of the most top-ranked prep players in the nation. He has a chance to average double digits in points, rebounds and assists this year for the Cougars.
“It’s been the experience of a lifetime getting to watch him in Las Vegas and him coming to see me,” Amauri says. “It’s something you don’t see happen a lot of times, two brothers playing at a high level in the same area. I’m cherishing the moment.”
When Coronado’s playing, it’s easy to find Amauri, assuming UNLV doesn’t have a game. He’s always sitting in the first row, zoned in on Jaden’s every move on the floor. Sometimes, it’s almost like he’s watching game film of himself. Jaden looks a lot like Amauri when he’s in attack mode, beating primary defenders off the dribble before slicing through the help.
Jaden spots up and shoots more than Amauri, but it’s always been that way. And Jaden makes no secret of the fact that Amauri has been the foundation for his playing style. “He was my role model,” Jaden says. “I was watching what he was doing and applying it to my game.”
Their brotherly bond has largely been collaborative. Sure, they occasionally played one-on-one growing up, and Jaden got frustrated that he couldn’t beat his older brother. But Amauri rarely gloated about those wins, and going head-to-head was never the focus.
Ramsey stressed that competitiveness be saved for opponents, and Amauri and Jaden say they took it to heart. “It’s more of a relief when we’re playing together,” Jaden says. “We just focus on basketball and the hard work we know we’ve got to put in to build to where we want to go.”
“We’ll compete every now and then, but we have different practices, different schedules, [so] we didn’t want to put too much pressure on our bodies,” Amauri says. “We didn’t want to use [the] energy we need for the next practice or game.”
They do have differing recollections of when Jaden had progressed to the point where he could hang with Amauri on the court. Jaden is confident it happened during his eighth-grade year, and he considers it a seminal moment when he could finally beat Amauri 1-on-1.
Amauri remembers it being a bit later—after Jaden’s freshman year at Coronado—when Amauri was blown away by Jaden’s upgraded passing and shooting abilities. Combine that with a growth spurt, and little brother suddenly had the length and tools to give him fits. They recommitted to working together in the gym as much as possible during that offseason, and the results show it.
Amauri went from a reserve as a UNLV freshman to arguably the Rebels’ most efficient offensive player as a sophomore, averaging 13 points and 3.5 assists per game during the 2018-2019 season. Jaden went from a (mostly) four-star prospect to a unanimous five-star pick by recruiting services, with his name showing up as a lottery pick in early mocks of the 2022 NBA Draft.
“I don’t want to take credit for his success,” Amauri says. “He’s done a great job staying humble, putting the right priorities first and creating good habits for himself. It’s a credit to him that he’s done it at such a young age. I didn’t see it coming this soon, but it’s the work he put in.”
In other ways, not much has changed. On nights when they’re all free, it’s not uncommon for Ramsey, Amauri and Jaden to head to the gym together for a little extra work. But it’s no longer Jaden fixating on Amauri. They’re both watching each other now.
“I think we’re always going to be like this—tight, close and working together,” Jaden says. “We’re always going to push each other to reach our goals.”
“This is a special moment, but this isn’t the end of everything,” Amauri says. “We’ve got a long road to go, a lot of basketball ahead of us.”
This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.
