Amen Thompson is the Rockets' REAL franchise player

Amen’s detractors presume he will never develop a shot. Amen’s backers believe he will at least develop a mid-range jump shot and, maybe, a decent 3 pt shot.

If Amen’s floor is what he is right now, like so many predict, then he is a near all-star, career dpoy candidate, and super role player. If he develops a shot, he is easily a top 10 player with a ceiling of a superstar. None of us know for sure which will happen. In any case, at 23 years old with his work-ethic and bbiq, he will be a max or near-max player and no team will be fool enough to trade him for fit reasons at this stage of his career. Whether he is your primary offensive option or not, he is the most likely on this team to be built around.

 

As far as I can tell, there are no "Amen detractors", just some overly sensitive fans who went from being crazy Jalen fanbois who thought reality was hate to crazy Amen fans who are now doing the same.

No one that I've seen "hates" on Amen. Some don't assume he's destined to be a top 10 player in the league... but that's not hate.

 

Agree with this, but he's not to the point that one can build around him. Build with, sure, but I'm not sure the Rockets have someone that the Rockets can build with Amen as much as I like Reed's potential.

I'm much more concerned with the young guys than I was a year ago.

 

I think that's the correct phrasing, you build around stars, you build with promising role players.

Right now, there aren't any stars... not even KD really, he's more of a former star.

We have 3 promising young players in Sengun, Amen, and Reed Sheppard. All 3 are super young and need to develop parts of their game that are lacking.

 

I can agree with all that. Arguing about the nuances of build around or build with is not worth arguing about. Especially since none of us knows the future and we don’t have anywhere as much information to build an opinion on as the front office and coaching staff. Of course, predicting the future of our players and their strengths and weaknesses and discussing possible trades, coaching blunders, rotations is the fun of this. I would add Jabari to the promising young players.

 

That's probably fair, it's easy to forget that he doesn't even turn 23 until May.

That said, he's clearly a level below the other 3.