The Houston Rockets have a wealth of young talent, but it looks like the basketball world was slightly off in crowning Jalen Green and Alperen Şengün as Houston’s rising star duo.
While Şengün belongs in that discussion, Green has been usurped this season by Amen Thompson as the Rockets’ most promising young guard.
Thompson was selected at No. 4 overall by the Rockets in the 2023 NBA draft, and he’s experienced a sophomore-year explosion in the league in 2024-25.
While Green is a superior jump shooter to Thompson, Thompson does pretty much everything else better than Green on both ends, with all due respect to the 23-year-old Green, who is a special talent in his own right.
But Thompson has taken a leap this year that has him looking like a future superstar.
On Monday, The Athletic’s Zach Harper provided some crazy statistical context to show just how special Thompson has been lately.
“This isn’t a surprise to anybody who has been paying attention to the Rockets the past couple months, but I wanted to highlight just how incredible and sustained Thompson’s play has been,” Harper wrote.
“Since the calendar turned to 2025, Thompson has played 22 games. He’s averaging 16.8 points, 9.6 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 1.9 steals and 1.5 blocks during this stretch, while making 54.0 percent of his shots. Let’s play the game of extrapolating that throughout an entire season. It’s been done only five times in NBA history: Kevin Garnett (twice), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Alvan Adams and DeMarcus Cousins (in a 48-game season).”
Arbitrary statistical comparisons like the above have a way of blowing things out of proportion, but the point is, Thompson is a unique talent at barely 22 years old.
He’s now shooting 54.8 percent from the field in 54 games this year, with averages of 13.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 3.5 assists per game.
With elite size for position as a 6-foot-7 guard, Thompson is also one of the most athletically gifted players in the NBA, meaning his ceiling as a defender is sky-high.
He may not be the next Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but the Rockets have a legitimate franchise-building block in Thompson.
