Ajay Mitchell, Thunder's breakout player, carries the dreams of his late father

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Mitchell imagined what his father might’ve said that night. The jokes, the affection. He yearned for the phone call, the ones they always shared, where his dad’s Virginian twang crept through. He envisioned the charm behind his father’s gentle voice. Tears blurred his vision and reddened his face. Inside the team’s film room, Barry Mitchell’s son wept. Ajay felt proud that he played, that he carried on, after the unexpected death of his father the night before. Barry Mitchell would’ve played. So, Ajay kept his dribble alive like he did any other night, fighting past pesky defenders, assuming his position as floor general. Sixteen points, seven rebounds and five assists later, he finally crumbled. “He would have wanted me to keep going,” Ajay said. “Anytime something would happen to him, if he was feeling sick or not great mentally at some point in his life, he would be like, ‘Don’t worry about me. Keep doing you. As long as you’re good, I’m good.’ I wanted to honor him. “I know my dad would have said, ‘Go out there and hoop. Go out there and play.’ I don’t want to let him down.” His father didn’t force basketball on him. He never confined him to gyms. Never compulsively coached him. Ajay adopted this obsession on his own while watching Barry, a hoops star in Belgium, voluntarily tracing his steps. The prospect of writing his own legend fed Ajay’s ambition. An appetite to not just wrap an injury-riddled rookie campaign with an NBA title, but leave his imprint on a championship in Year 2. To craft a legacy that measured up to his old man. In one night, his season, his mission, took on more meaning. This season no longer belonged to him alone. Ajay entered the fall with strenuous demands. Asked to absorb more responsibility and help bear a title-contending offense on his 23-year-old shoulders. To withstand the pressure that falls on defending champions with his typical grace. An afterthought during his one season next to future San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama on a grassroots French U-18 team, then a reserved, slight guard for UC Santa Barbara, Mitchell developed a tendency to let his game sort things out. He let performances speak for him and games filter his emotions. Nothing prepared him to hold himself together after losing the man who inspired him to play. Game 3 of the Thunder’s first-round series versus the Phoenix Suns marked Mitchell’s first NBA playoff start. He hoisted 20 shots, a career high in field goal attempts and audacity. “He’s obviously not shy. That’s a start,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said after that April 25 game. “Winners fail and losers hide. He wasn’t hiding.” Two nights later, Mitchell finished a Game 4 win as a team-high plus-27, totaling 22 points and six assists on 16 shots. Tuesday night, Mitchell had 18 points, four assists and only one turnover in a win to start the Thunder’s Western Conference semifinal against the Los Angeles Lakers. Mitchell’s more daring, more poised. He has matured game-to-game, suggesting he could supplement some of what the team missed as All-NBA wing Jalen Williams rehabbed a hamstring injury. “Mentally, he’s never shaken,” reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. “He’s never afraid of the moment. Ajay could be having the worst day ever, and you would never know. He’s so solid.” His teammates were with him on his worst day. They’ve witnessed the resilience since. The months it took to face such loss and portray stability. The time involved in finding some semblance of peace. To find composure all over again. Every so often, Barry’s words reverberate in his head. Ajay closes his eyes and sifts through them. “He’d always say, ‘You’re gonna be you. You’re not gonna be a second version of me,’” Ajay said. “It’s finding that right balance of honoring my dad, but also becoming the player I am, not the player he was. You’re kind of building your own legacy. “It was a dream of his to be an NBA player for as long as I could remember. Just trying to honor him in that way. I’m living this dream for me, obviously, but also for him.” Barry Mitchell made it known you shared the room with him. Everything was funny, to him and to those around him. He loved telling stories. The best parts of Barry feel hereditary. The warmth in his children’s expressions, in Ajay’s smile. The self-awareness they harness. The way they covet competition. “Really outgoing, very extroverted, always gonna be the one talking in the room,” recalled Alexis Steinbach, one of Barry’s daughters. “Maybe that’s why Ajay’s a little more observant.” Ajay, far too young for Barry’s prime, watched the twilight of his father’s basketball career with wide eyes. Dad was a rugged 6-foot-5, defensive-minded wing with biceps that seemed as wide as tires. He was graying and less agile, though his will remained strong. He was the oldest active pro player in Belgian basketball history, a two-time Belgian Cup winner, protective of his craft. His children remember how Barry barked at teammates, sometimes swearing at them when he didn’t receive the ball. Winning remained the priority, regardless of his age or the toll. Ajay rarely saw past that. Much of Ajay’s personality came from his mother, Fabienne Wagemans. He’s her only child. Last year, she moved in with him in Oklahoma City. She still cooks his meals and washes his clothes. She needed him as much as he needed her, she says. Ajay was a keenly aware child, watching his mother scramble to keep their home in Belgium upright. She was a fixer. Through her, he grew into a perfectionist. But Ajay watched Barry persist. His father’s aspirations subconsciously became his. “I remember a lot of times just going to his practices with him, building those connections with him,” Ajay said. “It always felt like he set everything up for me to follow his steps on the court.” When Ajay came of age, his father stepped into coaching. “He demanded a high level of excellence from all the players that he coached,” Steinbach said. “He was like an old-school, ‘I’m gonna be hard on you.’” Barry quietly wished his children continued his legacy. He hoped they’d carry his will further. Watch his mistakes and evolve. “I didn’t have the interest in basketball,” said Steinbach, a former Wisconsin volleyball player, “and I know that that pained him a little bit.” Barry knew fathers who extended their careers through their sons. Who breathed down their backs, passing along their fears and shortcomings. He let his son choose. “When we were at home, he would never want to train me,” Ajay said. “He was like, ‘You have your coaches; you’re learning from them. You don’t have to learn from me.’ He never really pushed me to play basketball or pushed me to work out every day. “It felt like he really wanted me to understand it has to come from me. I think it took time for me to realize it, but once I realized, I’m grateful. When I look back at it, I always wanted to play basketball — and it’s not because he played.” Barry mostly kept his wishes to himself. Without steering the wheel for his son, he enabled him to follow. To aim. “I think my dad always knew (Ajay) was going to be a pro,” Steinbach said. “He didn’t talk about it a lot. My dad was never running around Belgium saying, ‘Ajay Mitchell’s gonna be the next best thing to come out of Belgium.’ “I know he’d always tell Fabienne, ‘Just let him dream. If he sees himself in the NBA, let him dream. If he sees himself at a big school, let him dream, and he’ll get there.’” On the night the Thunder won the NBA Finals last June, with confetti still attached to the soles of his shoes, Mitchell beelined to his mother. He clutched her tightly, tears streaming down his face. Wagemans doesn’t hesitate when asked what she remembers her baby boy telling her: “This is only the beginning.” “To her, I knew how much it meant,” Mitchell recalled, “but I also knew that she knew that I wanted more, just for myself. In my head, it was like, ‘I just want to show you that.’” Mitchell’s father didn’t travel to Game 7. But throughout the playoffs, at games and at home, he wore a shirt with printed images of he and his son, both in uniform, both in their prime, with a message. IF YOU CAN SEE IT … YOU CAN BE IT! LIKE FATHER … LIKE SON! Mitchell called his dad that night. Barry’s thoughts mirrored his son’s. They choked up over this night, and they acknowledged the future. “He never wants to cry in front of me or when we’re on the phone,” Ajay said. “But I could tell how emotional he was. It’s a dream come true for him to be able to see his son win an NBA championship. I just remember him saying how much he was proud of me, and how much the road ahead is long. That it’s only the beginning.” Mitchell’s ambition only increased in the coming days. He wanted his fingerprints on the next title chase. “You’re really happy. You enjoy it,” Mitchell said. “But then, a couple days after that, you’re like, ‘Now, I gotta get better.’ My goal is to have a role on a team that can win a championship, be able to help my team.” Dating back to his first training camp in the fall of 2024, as a second-round pick, Mitchell’s ability to sift through the Thunder’s rotation of all-league defenders earned him looks. His teammates all described him the same way: cool, calm, collected. He organized offense and got shots off. For a baby-faced squad on the verge of contention, his game screamed for opportunity. He played from Day 1, averaging 16.6 minutes and appearing in each of the Thunder’s first 34 games last season. Then, his promising rookie year came to a halt. Turf toe surgery, which left him in a boot, robbed him of three months of playing time. When he returned in mid-April, his recovery timeline brushed too closely against the playoffs to meaningfully contribute. Losing his opportunity to injury as a rookie was disappointing but taught him patience. From the sideline, he scouted. He soaked up the intensity of a pair of Game 7s, understanding the emotional toll between games. He endured the mundane and the roller coaster of recovery. He learned the inner workings of a team capable of playing into June. His coming-out party began marinating in May. Through Oklahoma City’s 24-2 start this season, Mitchell looked the part, averaging 14 points and 3.7 assists in 25.8 minutes while bolstering his Sixth Man of the Year candidacy. He absorbed responsibility as an essential playmaker. Two months into his breakout, the death of Mitchell’s father fractured his world. Mitchell, historically, is a listener. An internalizer. Few knew what emotions stirred inside him. He preferred that his thoughts belonged to him. One of the people he consistently confided in, who invited him to ramble, was gone. Without his father, Mitchell harbored more conflicting emotions than ever. Too many to sit with. Amid the most important season of his career, all that love, all that loss, swelled inside him. Ajay’s instinct, to make his father proud, was turning to tunnel vision. But the genes of his mother granted him empathy and a tendency to lead with thoughtfulness. He grew up with his guard up “for no reason,” learning forgiveness and gathering emotional intelligence while in college. Suppressing everything he felt about his father would impede his season. It would undo the fabric of his parents’ teachings. He found that to heal and survive, his definition of composure required tweaking. Composure, he learned, isn’t a mask. It’s not confined to the court. He practiced vulnerability around family and teammates. “We all went through it,” Mitchell said. “It’s easy to just call my sister, call my brother. Talk about those things. Reading the Bible, praying. That’s helped me reconnect with my dad in some way. It feels like he’s still with me.” Steinbach, a longtime academic adviser at the University of Wisconsin, has long recognized her brother’s emotions. She’s noticed more pockets to probe. “I think he does a very good job of thinking and processing and finding ways to take what is a very painful and hard thing that we’re all going through,” Steinbach said, “and turn it into, ‘How can I be a better person, a better brother, a better boyfriend, a better son, a better basketball player?’ “Our dad has no time left, but we all do. I think Ajay’s really taken that as, ‘What can I do now? And do even better? Because I have time, and I am here.’ The maturity is wild.” Ajay’s most poignant memories of Barry, which surfaced in the days after he died and replay anytime he thinks of him, are simple. Driving with him to and from school. Learning the words to Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Gotta Have It.” How he’d phone him to joke that he’d lost his hearing after watching Ajay’s older brother, Elliott Black, shoot bricks in the gym. “There’s this voice in my head of him, you know?” Ajay said. “It feels like he never really left me.” “Every time something’s going on, I’m just like, ‘What would he say? What would he think?’” Mitchell said. “His biggest thing was always family, and I think the way we all handled it is the way he would want it to be. He would have wanted us to stay up, no matter what, and remember him for the good things and what he is. “I always think about the man he would want me to be. That drives me any time I’m in a tough spot mentally. Trying to think how tough he was. No matter what I’m going through, he’s probably been through worse, and I can overcome anything. You learn a lot about being patient with yourself. Letting those emotions come out. Not hiding them.” Mitchell finds reminders of his father in everything. During film. While bringing the ball up the floor. When hearing another boisterous laugh. “I remember our last phone call, and it was like, ‘I’m so proud of you, and I love you, and keep your foot on the gas. Don’t stop,’” Mitchell recalled. “That’s always something that, when I think about (it), no matter what’s going on, those are the things that matter. That’s really all I think about.” Mitchell always prayed before games. Only now he closes his eyes a little longer. He’s listening for something. Someone. The voice that never left. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms