Just call him AJ: Son of former NBA, UNC star Antawn Jamison forges own basketball legacy
Sitting on a stool in the middle of the gymnasium at Myers Park High School last week, Antawn Jamison Jr. — known to most everybody as “AJ” — looks a whole lot like his famous dad.
Same bushy eyebrows. Same big smile. Same easy laugh.
Same way of making you feel like he’s known you even though you just met.
Antawn Jamison Sr. is just a few steps away. At 6-foot-9, the father is nearly a half-foot taller than the son and is one of the best high school basketball players to play in North Carolina. He’s also arguably one of the five best North Carolina Tar Heels, too. And Dad played 16 years in the NBA, where he was a two-time All-Star and was named NBA Sixth Man of the year in 2004.
Jamison Sr. once scored 51 points in back-to-back games, the latter against the Lakers and Kobe Bryant, who also scored 51 in a game Jamison’s Golden State Warriors won. That performance came during the Lakers’ Shaquille O’Neal-led three-peat as NBA champions.
And since AJ Jamison started playing basketball, he wanted to be like his dad. Along the way, through hopes and failures and social pressure, he’s learned that’s it perfectly OK to just be AJ.
This is the story of how he got there.
“It’s a privilege being able to do the special things, like go to Carolina games, and see how people know who your dad is,” AJ Jamison said. “It’s really fun. To me, it was kind of normal.”
On his 7th birthday, AJ found himself at the Lakers’ practice facility in El Segundo, California, joking around with Bryant and former Lakers’ center Pau Gasol, a pair of then-future basketball Hall of Famers.
“I didn’t realize it was a big deal,” AJ said. “I didn’t look at it as something special, but looking back on it now, I realize how big of an opportunity I had that young.”
By then, AJ was already in love with basketball and was already making plans to be a big-time player like his dad. AJ said Antawn never put pressure on him or his younger brother, Rucker, to be great basketball players, but by his freshman year at Charlotte Christian, internal pressure and peer pressure started to get to AJ.
The rafters at UNC and chasing your friends
Antawn Jamison, now 48, was an instant star at Providence High School in southeast Charlotte. Almost impossibly long and impossibly athletic, he could run the floor and dunk with an ease rarely seen. By his junior year, he was the best player in the state. He was a McDonald’s All-American and Mr. N.C. Basketball as a senior.
He signed with North Carolina, with Dean Smith.
When his two boys started showing interest in basketball, Jamison always stressed to them to have fun, and always have an academic backup plan. He often took them back to Chapel Hill, where his legend had really grown. His kids would look up in the rafters and see his jersey hanging beside other great Tar Heels such as Michael Jordan, Tyler Hansbrough and James Worthy.
“I didn’t realize it when they were young,” said Jamison, who was an unanimous pick as 1998 college basketball player of the year. “It was like, ‘You’ve got a lot of expectations.’ We walk into (the Dean Dome) and I point up at the rafters. But I learned. I want them to enjoy this journey they are going on — it’s a different journey than I had — and just enjoy life. Life is short. Before you know it, you’re going to be raising a family and coming to see your own kids.”
By ninth grade at Charlotte Christian, AJ had turned into a good-looking prospect, but playing school and travel basketball with other high-level players, AJ started to have doubts.
“My freshman year,” he said, “I wasn’t where I thought I should be, and I was comparing myself to my peers. All my peers had Division-I offers or they had Division-I looks. Although (Dad) never put pressure on me, I put pressure on myself. I felt like if I didn’t have a certain status, I had failed because I didn’t get to where he got to.
“There was a time where I kind of resented him for it because it was so hard for me to get where I wanted to go, and I’m like, ‘Why is this happening to me?’”
Counseling and finding his way back
Antawn Jamison and AJ’s mother, Ione Rucker Jamison, suggested that AJ get professional counseling.
“I remember when he started playing at Charlotte Christian,” Antawn said of his son, “and one of the kids was like, ‘Your dad scored 51 and you’ve only got five!’ Just that pressure from their peers is something. And it’s a different age. This social media age is something. You’ve got to be accepted socially, and no matter what he hears when he comes back home — ‘There’s no pressure at all, be yourself and have fun,’ — I can tell, especially for him, he’s had to deal with that.
“I remember talking to somebody, and they’re like, ‘Antawn, imagine if your dad played 16 years (in the NBA) and went to Carolina and achieved some of the (things) you achieved, what would you have to think about?’”
So Jamison and Ione worked to get AJ set up with a counselor, and things began to change.
“Mental health is real,” Antawn said. “You think because you don’t have to worry about anything financially, and you can get anything you want and you’re smart in school, that you’re safe. But among his peers, guys he played with and guys he played against, he put so much pressure on himself.”
AJ said talking openly about everything turned everything around for him.
“Just talking to (his father) and talking to people and talking to my mom,” AJ said. “My mom helped me a lot with it, just knowing you’re more than a basketball player. Knowing my identity is not just dribbling a ball and making baskets.”
A transfer and a new start
After two seasons at Charlotte Christian, AJ transferred to Myers Park last season, joining a nationally-ranked team with three top 100 players — Bishop Boswell, Sir Mohammed and Sadiq White.
Boswell (Tennessee) and Mohammed (Notre Dame) are freshmen in college now. White is a high school senior playing at national power IMG Academy in Florida. He has signed with Syracuse.
AJ Jamison played a key role on that Mustangs team, which lost to the 2024 N.C. Mr. Basketball Isaiah Evans and North Mecklenburg in the state quarterfinals. Jamison nearly doubled his sophomore scoring average at Charlotte Christian, going to 9.4 points and 2.2 rebounds per game.
After that season, Mustangs’ coach Scott Taylor left. White left. AJ Jamison’s brother, Rucker, decided to follow Taylor to Ambassador Christian, a new private school in Huntersville.
AJ Jamison decided to stay.
“I’ve had to adapt to a lot,” he said. “Just learning early how to be a leader. The past couple of years I’ve been in the back seat, having people lead me. I’m starting to get the hang of it now.”
AJ Jamison is third in scoring this season (6.7 points per game) and leads Myers Park in assists per game (3.8) and is second in steals (1.7).
“AJ is a phenomenal leader for us,” said first-year Myers Park coach Andrew Glover. “He’s a dominant force. He hits the boards extremely hard. He’s a great defender and he leads our team in assists and charges (taken). He does a lot of things that not everybody wants to do.”
His father says AJ has a chance to play lower-level Division I or Division II college basketball, “but his dream is to go to Carolina. I’ll think he’ll go the Carolina route, play JV, walk on and maybe be in the basketball program for two years.”
Antawn said his son has been academically accepted to schools such as Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky, Miami and Mississippi, and has lots of options.
“That’s the one thing I put my foot down on,” Antawn said. “I know that (he) loves the game of basketball, but you have to have a backup plan. For him to be the student he is and be the athlete, I’m more proud of that than anything.”
Colleges, houses and the baby bro
Rucker Jamison is a 6-1 freshman at Ambassador Christian, and his coach and area scouts project him as a potential high-level Division I player.
Antawn Jamison does, too.
“Baby boy’s a little different,” Jamison said. “I think he has my personality and doesn’t let too much get to him. I think by him seeing AJ going through the ups and downs and kind of struggle a little bit, that’s helped. His journey has been a little different, and a lot of people say he’s the one that can make some noise.”
Taylor, the coach at Ambassador Christian, said Rucker reminds him of some of the other high-level players he’s coached, like White and Boswell and Mohammed and former Kansas star Devon Dotson, who played for Taylor at Providence before he became a McDonald’s All-American at Providence Day.
“They’re very different personalities and demeanors,” Taylor said of the Jamison brothers. “AJ, you could see it in his face that he wanted it so bad. Rucker has a little bit more of a wall up around all that. But it’s hard. You’re talking about (being the son of) one of the best players to ever come through Charlotte, but also a UNC and NBA all-timer.”
AJ is rooting for his baby brother to become a star player. He’s also becoming quite comfortable in his own skin, too.
“I feel like Rucker is on a different path than me,” he said. “He’s had some of that early success that I didn’t have, and he loves to play and I don’t think he puts that pressure on himself.”
If there’s any pressure that AJ is feeling right now it’s around Jan. 31, when UNC sends out its acceptance letters.
He’s hoping to get one. And he already knows what he wants to study in Chapel Hill.
“I want to be a business major,” he said. “I’ve taken a liking to real estate, so I want to do that. And if I get into Carolina, potentially I will (try to) walk on. My dad doesn’t tell me much, but he says he’s working on it.”
As the interview is about to end, AJ starts to get up from a large black wooden stool. He’s asked how he would like people to remember him at Myers Park.
He sits back down. He ponders the question for a second.
Then he looks up.
“I’d like to be remembered as AJ Jamison, not necessarily Antawn Jamison,” he said. “I feel like I’m AJ, and not necessarily Antawn. I’m my own person. I’m my own basketball player. I’m my own student. So that’s how I want to be remembered.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Just call him AJ: Son of former NBA, UNC star Antawn Jamison forges own basketball legacy."
