Nate Ament, a top pick in next year's NBA draft, is playing for something much bigger

Tennessee star freshman Nate Ament's mother escaped the Rwandan genocide when she was a child. Now he's going to the country to give back.

Nate Ament’s mother used to struggle to tell her kids about her life’s journey.

Ament, 18, will soon begin his freshman season for the Tennessee Volunteers after turning down a multitude of suitors. He is one of the most hyped prospects in college basketball, and is widely seen as a top contender to go first overall in the 2026 NBA draft and make millions of dollars in salary and endorsements.

One generation before him, Ament’s mother, Godelive Mukankuranga, was born of Tutsi ancestry in Rwanda. And after she finished elementary school, Mukankuranga had limited options — she wasn’t allowed to go to a public secondary school because of her heritage. And private school would be expensive.

Mukankuranga, however, was offered through UNICEF a chance to go to school in Pisa, Italy. She lived with an Italian couple who would eventually become her adoptive parents while she studied to be a nurse. What Mukankuranga left behind was her home country and most of her family, who would become entangled in the Rwandan Civil War — and the concurrent genocide against the Tutsi.

“I did not really talk with my kids a lot about it because they were young and I didn’t want them to know this sad news,” Mukankuranga told NBC News. “Slowly, I introduced to them what happened to me.”