Background and career
Amar'e Carsares Stoudemire (born November 16, 1982), also known as Yehoshophat ben Avraham, is an American-Israeli professional basketball coach and former player who most recently served as a player development assistant for the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2025 and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2026. He won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 2003 with the Phoenix Suns, who selected him with the ninth overall pick of the 2002 NBA draft. He made six appearances in the NBA All-Star Game and was named to the All-NBA Team five times, including one first-team selection in 2007. Stoudemire was inducted into the Phoenix Suns Ring of Honor on March 2, 2024. Stoudemire played high school basketball for three schools, ultimately graduating from Cypress Creek High School in Orlando, Florida, and declaring for the NBA draft as a prep-to-pro player. He won several prep honors, including being selected as Florida's Mr. Basketball. Stoudemire had chronic knee problems during his career and underwent microfracture surgery on both knees. He played for the Suns, the New York Knicks, the Dallas Mavericks, and the Miami Heat before retiring from the NBA in 2016. Stoudemire won a bronze medal with the United States national team at the 2004 Olympic Games. His off-court ventures include a record label, a clothing line, acting and a series of children's books for Scholastic Press. In addition, Stoudemire owns a significant share of Hapoel Jerusalem, the team he won a championship with in 2017. He won the championship with Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2020 and was named the Israeli Basketball Premier League Finals MVP.
Stoudemire was born in Lake Wales, Florida, a small city, an hour away from Orlando, Florida. Stoudemire's parents, Hazell and Carrie (née Palmorn), divorced when he was young. Together they had two sons and a daughter: Hazell Jr., Ladesha, and Amar'e. Stoudemire's mother did agricultural work, picking oranges in Florida and migrating north to upstate New York to pick apples during the fall. Upon divorcing Hazell, she met Artis Wilmore, with whom she had a son, Marwan, Stoudemire's half-brother. His father died of a heart attack when Stoudemire was 12, and his mother was in and out of prison for crimes such as petty theft and forgery during that time. Stoudemire lived in Newburgh, New York "for about five months" in 1994 before relocating to Port Jervis, New York where he lived until 1998. In his parents' absence, Stoudemire had other outside influences to help guide him, including a policeman, Burney Hayes, he occasionally stayed with; he also lived with his Fastbreak USA, AAU squad's coach, Travis King, as well as a minister, Rev. Bill Williams.
Stoudemire did not start playing organized basketball until he was 14. As a result of moving in-and-out with his mother and her problems with the law, Stoudemire transferred between five high schools in two states six different times. He first attended Lake Wales High School in Lake Wales, Florida, where his freshman season was cut short due to academic ineligibility. He transferred to Mount Zion Christian Academy in Durham, North Carolina, to play for coach Joel Hopkins. Midway through the year, Hopkins founded Emmanuel Christian Academy in a Durham office building basement and took the Mount Zion basketball team to serve as his student body; the school folded before they played a game. Stoudemire returned to Florida where he attended summer school at Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando. He briefly reenrolled at Mount Zion Academy and then sat out a year at West Orange High School in Winter Garden, Florida, due to academic ineligibility that stemmed from his transcripts from Mount Zion. His final move was to Cypress Creek High School in Orlando, Florida, where he graduated in 2002. Due to all the transfers, he missed his entire junior year of basketball and only played two full seasons. Apart from basketball, Stoudemire excelled in football. He was coached by his father in Pop Warner football and imagined himself a star receiver for the University of Miami, University of Florida or Florida State University. Growing up he rooted for Shaquille O'Neal, center for the hometown Orlando Magic of the NBA. In his senior year, Stoudemire averaged 29.1 points, 15 rebounds, 6.1 blocked shots, and 2.1 steals per game. Among Stoudemire's high school honors was being selected to play in the 2002 McDonald's All-American Game at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where he played with two future New York Knicks teammates, Carmelo Anthony and Raymond Felton. He was also named Florida's Mr. Basketball, the Orlando Sentinel's Florida High School Player of the Year, and to USA Today's All-USA Basketball First Team. Considered a five-star recruit by Scout.com, Stoudemire was listed as the No. 1 player in the nation in 2002. With his biggest goal in high school being making it to the NBA, Stoudemire committed to the University of Memphis. However, he later de-committed and declared for the NBA draft, being taken with the ninth pick in the 2002 NBA draft by the Phoenix Suns. He was the only high school player taken that year in the first round.
In his rookie season, Stoudemire averaged 13.5 points and 8.8 rebounds per game, with a season high of 38 points against the Minnesota Timberwolves on December 30, 2002, the highest score by a prep-to-pro player until broken a year later by LeBron James. Stoudemire was selected to the Rookie squad in the Rookie Challenge. In the game, Stoudemire recorded 18 points, 7 rebounds and 4 steals. Stoudemire won the NBA's Rookie of the Year award, beating out Yao Ming and Caron Butler and becoming the first player drafted out of high school to win the award. Stoudemire also was selected to the NBA All-Rookie First Team. The Suns, led by Stoudemire, Stephon Marbury, Shawn Marion, Penny Hardaway and Joe Johnson, made it to the playoffs but were defeated in six games by the eventual champions, the San Antonio Spurs.
During the following season, Stoudemire improved statistically, but his team stumbled to a 29–53 record, and point guard Marbury was traded to the New York Knicks. During the season Stoudemire had a 10-block game against the Utah Jazz; he recorded six blocks in the first quarter alone (both team records). During the summer of 2004, Stoudemire was selected to play for the eventual bronze medal-winning 2004 U.S. national team in the Summer Olympics. However, head coach Larry Brown declined to give him significant playing time (6.9 minutes per game).
During the 2004–05 season, Stoudemire teamed up with point guard Steve Nash whom the Suns signed as a free agent, to lead the Suns to a 62–20 record. Averaging 26 points per game that year and achieving a new career high of 50 points against the Portland Trail Blazers, he was selected to his first NBA All-Star Game as a reserve forward. Stoudemire and Nash ran a pick-and-roll some have compared to Hall of Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone. In the Western Conference Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, Stoudemire averaged 37 points per game, but the Suns still lost in five games.
