I know you’re tired of reading about Amen Thompson’s jump shot.
The Houston Rockets aren’t immune to the usual offseason fare. Everyone’s stronger, everyone’s got the right mindset, and most importantly, everyone has improved their jump shot.
Until the season starts and it becomes apparent that some players have regressed. How is that possible? They spent all summer posting video footage of themselves beating non-NBA players in empty gym drills!
Cynicism aside, there’s reason to be optimistic about
the Rockets. Many of their key players are young, so improvement is expected. Just don’t go into 2026-27 expecting Thompson to morph into a knockdown three-point shooter.
What is a reasonable expectation for the youngster?
Rockets’ Thompson can improve his shot
The Gold Standard for a wing improving his jumper is Kawhi Leonard, but actually, Leonard’s shot was never broken at the NBA level. He shot 37.6% from three as a rookie, and rarely (if ever) dipped below league average.
Of course, he worked with Chip Engelland before his rookie year.
In college, Leonard shot 25.0% from three-point range. So, that’s at least a bit of Engelland proof of concept that’s directly applicable to Thompson.
Skeptics will point out that Leonard is an outlier case, and they will be 100.0% correct. It’s rare for such a poor shooter to make such an improvement.
But it does happen.
How about LeBron James? He shot 29.0% from deep as a rookie (granted, this was what most NBA historians know as the Yao Ming Era), and didn’t start consistently shooting around league average until his 9th NBA season (age 27).
Need a less GOAT-ish example? Tobias Harris hit 26.1% of his rookie season threes and wasn’t very good until his sixth year (age 25).
Here’s where Thompson is a weird case. At 21, he was an older rookie. So he’s heading into age 24 season, and it’ll be his fourth year.
The (very limited set of) data here doesn’t know what to do with that. James and Harris both took longer to find their stroke, but if age is the more relevant variable, Thompson is close to where Harris was. He’s also worked with Engelland, but most who’ve found success with him started earlier, whether in college or their first couple of NBA seasons.
So, long and short, this has been an exercise in futility. It’s unknowable. Some will also point out that Thompson’s jumper will be perhaps Engelland’s greatest challenge yet.
The reality is that Thompson is likely to never be a “good” shooter. The objective is to get him to a place where a wide-open three is a good shot for the Rockets’ offense. Here’s a (not very) fun fact: Thompson shot 21.6% from deep last year. When he was designated as wide open by NBA.com? Yup:
21.6%.
That’s the same number. This suggests that the vast majority of Thompson’s threes were wide open. That’s likely to hold in 2026-27, but if he could get that number up to around 27-28%, it would be indicative of real improvement and a reason for optimism:
Although unfortunately, not reason enough to stop writing about it.
