WASHINGTON — When Jayden Hardaway and DJ Rodman walk into the pressroom inside the Washington Wizards’ practice arena, there are both subtle and obvious indicators that they are the sons of ’90s NBA greats Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway and Dennis Rodman.
Aside from much longer hair, Jayden Hardaway is a spitting image of his dad. From his face to his muscular build (he is 6-feet-5, and his father is 6-feet-7), even down to the skinny, triangular goatee his dad used to rock as a member of the Orlando Magic, it’s like coming out of a time machine in 1994 when looking at him.
If you saw DJ Rodman walking down the street, you wouldn’t immediately peg him for the son of “The Worm,” because he has a lighter complexion and favors his mother. But a glance at his painted black fingernails hints at his lineage.
While the NBA is full of the sons of former players — last season, the Golden State Warriors had five such players on its roster — it’s rare to have the sons of stars at the level of Penny Hardaway, and Dennis Rodman make it to this point at the same time. On Oct. 26, the Capital City Go-Go, the G League affiliate for the Wizards, took them in the second round of the developmental league’s draft.
Making it on an NBA roster may be a long shot, but they’re banking on the intangibles they learned over long college careers to one day make it to a main roster. But as they enter their pro basketball careers, Hardaway and Rodman want to chart paths that don’t rely on their famous last names.
“We appreciate the love, and we know the ‘expectations’ we’ll get, but we’ll know what we have to do every night to be our best selves, and there’s no point in comparing us to our fathers,” Hardaway said at the Capital City Go-Go’s media day Nov. 6.
“They were a rare breed. We’ll be our best selves.”
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After a stellar college career at the University of Memphis, including a Sweet 16 berth in 1992, Penny Hardaway was drafted third overall in 1993 by the Golden State Warriors and was traded to the Orlando Magic. Over the next three seasons, the dynamic guard formed a successful one-two punch with Shaquille O’Neal, leading to a trip to the 1995 NBA Finals. Hardaway’s athleticism, handles, and Magic Johnson-like playmaking made him one of the most popular athletes of that era, illustrated by a Nike signature sneaker line and a series of commercials featuring a puppet with his likeness voiced by actor Chris Rock. Knee injuries derailed his career, and Hardaway retired in 2007. In 2018, he was hired as the coach at his alma mater, where he still coaches today.
After a high school career that included a state championship victory in 2017, Jayden Hardaway joined his father at Memphis. He redshirted his freshman season in 2018-19 and played sparingly over the next five seasons, averaging 11.7 minutes and 3.3 points in 132 games (26 starts).
Regardless of playing time, Penny Hardaway handled his son as if he were a five-star recruit.
“He would push me like I was our best player,” Jayden Hardaway said. “He would be on me harder than everybody else on the team just to try to prepare me for any moment.”
Go-Go coach Cody Toppert was an assistant at Memphis during three of Jayden Hardaway’s seasons on the team. He describes the younger Hardaway as a team-first, high-character presence who helped keep the locker room together. Being the coach’s son and the son of Penny Hardaway never deterred Jayden Hardaway, and he remained humble, which is why Toppert wanted to draft him.
“He’s proud of that, so he doesn’t run from it, he embraces it, but then he doesn’t let it impact what he does and who he is,” Toppert said. “He has his own distinct identity.”
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Penny Hardaway was a bona fide star before he left college. Dennis Rodman took a different path. He played at Cooke County Junior College in Dallas for one season, then went to the NAIA program Southeastern Oklahoma State University for three seasons. Both were a far cry from Division I basketball. Regardless, Rodman built a reputation as a masterful rebounder, which led to the Detroit Pistons taking him in the second round of the 1986 draft. As a member of the “Bad Boys,” with Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, and Chuck Daly, Rodman morphed into a defensive juggernaut who wasn’t afraid to dust it up on the court. By the time he joined Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in 1995, he was a tattooed, hair-dyed oddball who dated models and was as known for his antics just as much as his play.
Dennis “DJ” Rodman Jr., whose sister, Trinity Rodman, plays for the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League and won a gold medal with Team USA in the 2024 Paris Games, played at Washington State from 2019 to 2023, averaging 9.6 points and 5.8 rebounds in his final season. Following the 2022-23 season, Rodman transferred to USC, where he joined a roster headlined by No. 1 high school prospect Isaiah Collier and Bronny James, the son of Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James. The Trojans were ranked No. 21 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, and the program became a media circus due to the presence of the younger James.
“We were probably one of the most hyped teams in college basketball,” Rodman said.
In July 2023, James suffered a cardiac arrest during a USC workout and didn’t play his first game until December of that season. Following a 4-1 start, USC lost four of its next six games before ending the season with a 15-18 record, topped off by a blowout 70-49 loss to Arizona in the Pac-12 tournament.
Through all the challenges, Rodman, who averaged 8 points and five rebounds in his only season with the Trojans, tried to remain even-keeled and positive despite the losses, his effort to keep the team together.
“I’ma be mad the night of a loss, but the next day I’ma come with a smile on my face because you can’t live in the past, you can’t live in other people’s expectations either,” Rodman said.
Stephen Gosling/NBAE via Getty Images
Stephen Gosling/NBAE via Getty Images
That mindset is why Toppert wanted to draft Hardaway and Rodman. They’re versatile athletes who understand the components that lead to team success, not individual success, which is one of the purposes of the G League.
Rodman is an intense, selfless defender who prides himself on doing the extra things — rebounding, diving for loose balls, etc. — that contribute to team wins.
“I actually find a lot of joy in being out of breath,” he said.
He learned that mentality from watching his father’s old Finals games with the Pistons and Bulls on the long-running NBA TV show Hardwood Classics (Dennis Rodman last played in the NBA in 2000, a year before DJ Rodman was born).
“He didn’t have a problem guarding the best guy,” DJ Rodman said. “I plan on having that same mentality when it comes to being a player on the court.”
Hardaway also takes pride in his defensive skills, labeling himself a “3 and D” guy who can also knock down shots (he shot 31.7% from 3 at Memphis, though he converted 46% during the 2021-22 season). Versatility, he said, is his biggest strength.
“If I need to make plays, like if somebody’s hot and I need to be the one to make sure he’s finding shots, I can do that. Or if I need to space the floor and be ready to knock a shot down, I can do that. Or if it’s taking the challenge of guarding the best player on the other team, I’m up for any challenge,” Hardaway said.
Capital City Go-Go
Hardaway, 25, and Rodman, 23, come in with maturity and an understanding of their roles at this level of competition, compared to a one-and-done teenager expecting to ball out in the G League and get called up immediately.
“I feel like we have a very realistic look on what we can be and what we’re going to be for a team in the future and this team today,” Rodman said.
Where the two differ, though, is their relationship with their respective fathers. Hardaway grew up with his father, attending games in the latter years of his dad’s career. And he eventually followed his father to Memphis for five years. The two have a great relationship that extends past the court.
“It’s a big difference between Dad and Coach,” Jayden Hardaway said. “Me and Dad are super-cool, me and Coach bumped heads at times.”
That’s not the same for DJ Rodman. Dennis Rodman was abandoned by his dad when he was 6, he wrote in his memoir, Bad As I Wanna Be. “I haven’t seen my father in more than 30 years, so what’s there to miss? I look at it like this: Some man brought me into this world. That doesn’t mean I have a father.” In the past, Trinity Rodman has said that her father was rarely in her and her brother’s lives growing up, though she has rekindled some of the relationship in recent years.
DJ Rodman said he doesn’t “necessarily talk to him as much as everyone thinks I do,” but that doesn’t mean he runs from who he is. His mother told him never to feel as if he had to live up to who his father is but rather chart his own path.
“Just because I’m around him doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and party every single night, I’m going to be a nuisance, doesn’t mean I’m going to be all these things that everyone thinks I’m going to be,” Rodman said, adding that he prefers to stay home with his girlfriend and play video games.
Success for Hardaway and Rodman won’t be immediate. Hardaway has appeared in just two of the team’s first six games for four total minutes (zero points). Rodman has seen action in four games, he’s averaging just 3.5 points. But this is about the slow process of becoming better players and teammates so they can suit up for an NBA team someday. And when they do, it will be because of their first names rather than the famous last names of their fathers.
“We’re not going to be naive to the fact that our dads are who they are,” Rodman said. “We’re going to try our hardest to be different and carve our own path even though, of course, we’re always going to have that cloud over our head.”