D.J. Augustin: The Undersized Point Guard Who Lasted Fifteen Years

The New Orleans Quarterback Who Beat the Spread

D.J. Augustin is not the most famous basketball player to come out of New Orleans. He didn't have the highlight reels of a De'Aaron Fox or the physical dominance of a Marshall Faulk on the football field. What Augustin had was something more New Orleans than all of that: he was undersized, overlooked, and he just kept proving people wrong for fifteen years in the NBA.

Augustin was born in New Orleans in 1987 and attended Brother Martin High School, where he became one of the best point guards in the state. At six feet tall in a league that kept getting bigger, he was the kind of player that scouts loved to watch and then cross off their lists because of his height. He went to the University of Texas, started from day one, and led the Longhorns to back-to-back Big 12 championships.

The Charlotte Bobcats drafted him ninth overall in 2008, and what followed was a fourteen-year NBA career that took him to nine different teams. Augustin was never an All-Star, never a franchise player, but he was something arguably more valuable: a reliable, professional point guard who could step into any system, run an offense, hit open shots, and make the players around him better. In a league obsessed with superstars, Augustin was the working man—the guy who showed up every night and did his job.

His biggest moment came in the 2019 NBA playoffs when, playing for the Orlando Magic, he hit a game-winning three-pointer against the Toronto Raptors in Game 1. It was the kind of shot that defines a career for a player like Augustin—proof that the undersized kid from Brother Martin could deliver when it mattered most.

D.J. Augustin represents a New Orleans athletic tradition that doesn't get enough credit: the player who doesn't have the measurables, doesn't have the hype, but has the heart and the skill to make it at the highest level. New Orleans keeps producing athletes like that—players who are told they're too small or too slow and who respond by playing for fifteen years in the best basketball league on earth.