Amar'e Stoudemire

Amar'e Carsares Jehoshaphat Stoudemire ( ; ; born November 16, 1982) 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 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 played high school basketball for three different 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 suffered from 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. Early life 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: Hazell Jr. 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.