I want the answer to be no.
Full transparency: Thompson is my favorite player in the NBA. I’ve not kept that a secret.
Yet, as a writer, I am tethered to reality. Thompson is not the best player in the NBA. He’s not even in that ballpark – at least*, not by any publicly available metric.
*Em dash usage does not denote AI usage.
It seems the Rockets’ proprietary metrics have unearthed a secret. HoopsCollective’s Tim MacMahon is reportingthat the Rockets’ own data has Thompson as one of the ten most valuable
players in the NBA.
Is that remotely possible?
Rockets’ Thompson has sneaky impact
DataBallr does not share the Rockets’ conviction.
Their Daily Plus/Minus (DPM) metric, which aims to “estimate player impact on expected team scoring differential per 100 possessions, with teammate/opponent effects controlled”, has Thompson at +1.2.
That’s good. It’s in the 92nd percentile. It’s also not even in the same zip code as the top-10. It’s not in the top-30. It’s so far down that I stopped counting, and you’ll have to either do it for yourself or just live with the 92nd percentile.
Dunks and Threes Estimated Plus/Minus (EPM) paints a similar picture. Thompson’s +2.7 is in, again, the 92nd percentile.
It’s sure starting to feel like Thompson is roughly in the 92nd percentile in impact!
Is it possible that, while the publicly available stuff has Thompson in (to reiterate) the 92nd percentile, the Rockets’ internal metrics have him closer to the 98th? You’d have to ask a statistician, but it feels unlikely.
So what’s going on here?
Rockets right to regard Thompson highly
Now, if the Rockets’ actual internal view is that Thompson is one, say, of the last ten NBA players who should be traded, that feels more viable.
Thompson compared favourably to his peers in EPM in 2025-26. Among his draft mates, only Victor Wembanyama (99th) and Brandon Miller (95th) are in higher percentiles. The latter benefited from an elite playmaker in LaMelo Ball, and the former is Victor Wembanyama.
Moreover, that was an especially strong class. Thompson is in the same percentile as notable young guys like Scottie Barnes and Franz Wagner, and he’s ahead of Evan “The Rockets should have picked me” Mobley (89th percentile).
Thompson is also arguably a different type of young player. He was a “project” coming into the league. When it comes to athleticism, Thompson is 100th percentile. His skill development was always the question mark.
How has he fared? It’s complicated. Let’s shift away from fancy acronyms and towards eye-test-based basketball talk.
To my eye, the handle has improved. Thompson can get to the rim from the perimeter with the rock now. It doesn’t look pretty – it’s a bludgeoning style of basketball – but during his first couple of seasons, it looked like cutting without the ball was his only route from A to B.
Here comes the inevitable.
The shot. It was bad; it’s still bad; it’s more likely than not always going to be bad. The midrange efficiency has waxed and waned; the three-ball has fluctuated between “awful” and “Dear God, won’t somebody think of the children?”
It can improve. Chip Engelland seems like the best shot doctor in the league, so that’s nice. Still, even getting Thompson’s shot to a normal level of bad would qualify as an accomplishment.
As long as the jumper is broken, defenses can deploy funky strategies against the Rockets. Some of those strategies would be less effective if the Rockets’ second-best offensive player wasn’t a low-post big, but in equal measure, it will always be a problem if Thompson won’t shoot.
Arguably, it’s too substantial a problem to include him in any reasonable top-10.
I’m not naive. The Rockets likely leaked this information to MacMahon for the sake of postering. It’s also likely true that the organization has no interest in trading Thompson at market value, nor should they.
So…the point? The point…hmmm…
If the Rockets want to “control the message”, they might want to leak more realistic reports.
Even I don’t believe they have Thompson as a top-10 player in the NBA.
