The Houston Rockets have been the best story in the NBA this season, as they’ve gone from a young team full of potential to one of the best teams in the league. At 31-14, the Rockets are second in the West, six games back of the Thunder, and have made quite the statement over the last few weeks, beating top-4 teams in both conferences (Memphis, Denver, Cleveland, and Boston) in six of their last nine games.
What has made this Rockets team so good is their defense, balance, and depth, but that is creating a bit of a conundrum this week as coaches get set to make their reserve selections for the All-Star rosters. Coaches tend to want to reward top teams with All-Star nods, and it’d be hard to justify not sending a representative from Houston to the All-Star Game. The player on the Rockets with the best statistical case as an All-Star is Alperen Sengun, averaging 19.2 points and 10.4 rebounds per game, but he’s actually taken a small step back from last year in terms of efficiency. Jalen Green is the team’s leading scorer, but at just 21.2 points per game with 42.9/35.9/87.1 shooting splits, he has not been such a lethal scorer that he’s an All-Star lock in a crowded West backcourt race.
My guess is Sengun lands a spot, in part because he has the best stats and also because he was just on the outside looking in last year for a selection. However, for basically anyone that’s watched the Rockets of late, there is a different player that has stood out and looks like the centerpiece of Houston’s roster: Amen Thompson.
The fourth overall pick from the 2023 NBA Draft had a solid rookie campaign, showing flashes of brilliance and the athletic upside in his 62 appearances that made him such a tantalizing prospect. Through 42 games of his sophomore campaign, Thompson has cemented himself as one of the league’s premier defensive wings, taking on the challenge of guarding the opponent’s best perimeter player most nights. Most excitingly, he’s started to take on a larger offensive role and is continuing to thrive.
The last 10 games have been Thompson’s most consistent in terms of scoring impact, as he’s averaging 19.2 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 4.4 assists on 57.4 percent shooting. On Monday night against the Celtics, Thompson put forth the best outing of his young career. He set a new career-high with 33 points (on 13-of-19 shooting), gave Jayson Tatum fits with his defense, and hit his first career game-winner with just under a second to go on a floater in the lane over Jaylen Brown.
That the Rockets opted to go to Thompson on the final possession and let him have the ball in his hands felt important. It was a show of trust in his young, budding star that Ime Udoka would leave Green in the corner, Sengun in the dunker spot, and have the veteran Fred VanVleet inbounding it to Thompson for a clear-out. Thompson rewarded that with a decisive take, going straight at Brown and using his strength to create space, stopping and popping for the game-winning floater.
Part of what has made Thompson so effective this season is his understanding of what he’s not. The swing skill for many coming into the 2023 Draft was whether Thompson could become a viable shooter at the NBA level. That hasn’t happened, as he’s shooting just 25 percent from three this season. While it’s an improvement on his rookie year when he shot 14 percent, being a non-threat from three hasn’t stopped him from being a highly effective player. Thompson has elite burst and athleticism, and can close down space quickly on defenders even when they sag off of him, as he showed against Brown on that final possession. Once into the body, he has the strength and balance to go through defenders and has the touch and skill to finish through contact at or near the rim.
It’s extremely rare for a player who isn’t a big man to be a non-shooter and still be above-average in shooting efficiency, but Thompson manages to do just that. On the ball, he’s fantastic at getting where he wants with his strength and speed. Off ball, he punishes defenses for not paying attention to him in the corner with timely baseline cuts. He refuses to settle for shots he’s not good at, and his relentless pursuit of the rim makes his shooting deficiencies moot, as he takes 71.7 percent of his shot attempts from inside 10 feet. Inside the restricted area, he finishes at a 75.7 percent clip. From 3-10 feet, 50 percent, and he’s even developed a decent midrange jumper, knocking down 45.7 percent of his shots from 10-16 feet.
Finding a comp for Thompson is difficult, because not a lot of players carve out significant roles with his skillset on the wing, but you could go with “shorter Giannis,” or perhaps “evolutionary Andre Iguodala.” In a league that is obsessed with the 3-and-D archetype, Thompson is carving out a unique path to stardom. The Rockets, for their part, seem eager to support that journey, and while you can’t build the whole team out of non-shooters, you can recognize when you have a singular talent on your hands, which Houston seems to.
Pairing Thompson with an elite passing big in Sengun helps negate spacing concerns, as a timely cut is rewarded with an on-time pass. As Houston continues to build and tinker with the roster, they’ll seek out more shooting to support their young stars, but even without that, they manage to grind teams down defensively, throwing waves of physical, long defenders at teams that make life miserable for 48 minutes. That is part of the recipe for Houston’s success in close games. The other part is being able to attack teams in different ways on the offensive end in key situations.
Houston’s offense is far from the league’s most dynamic, but they’ve been able to lean on Green, Sengun, and more recently Thompson to create a bucket in big moments late. For Thompson in particular, his refusal to settle for a jumper makes him dangerous, as teams are wary of fouling and his determination to get to the rim puts opponents in a bind. He probably won’t get the All-Star nod for the Rockets this year, but it’s becoming apparent that Thompson is the player that will determine the Rockets ceiling, and right now, it feels like we haven’t even seen the best it could become.
