Fred VanVleet Explains Challenge of Amen Thompson at Point Guard for Rockets

This season has been one of major change for Amen Thompson. He's long immersed as one of the league's best wing defenders (and one of the best defenders across the league, irrespective of position).

He's become a do-it-all player for the Houston Rockets.

So much that the Rockets' brainpower opted to move him to on-ball playmaking point guard when Fred VanVleet went down with a torn ACL at the start of the season.

Which seemed logical initially, as Thompson played the facilitating guard position as an amateur in the Overtime Elite.

However, there's a major difference between the NBA and OTE.

The level of competition is far from comparable. And the game speed isn't close to similar.

The Amen Thompson at point guard experiment has been quite challenging.

Offensively, Thompson is best when slashing and getting downhill. Or living in the dunker spot or roaming near the baseline.

It helps overcompensate his inability to shoot from long-range, while also putting his elite athleticism to use.

With him as Houston's lead initiator, it puts him on the perimeter and/or three-point line, which plays into the defensive gameplan.

His lack of a viable handle is also exposed in the point guard capacity, in addition to his inability to operate in the pick-and-roll.

His turnovers have gone up to 2.5 per game.

It's a work in progress. Fred VanVleet, Houston’s normal starting point guard, spoke on Thompson's new positional alignment during Houston's last victory over the LA Clippers.

"Man, he's taken a big jump over the last few weeks.

He's getting more control of the offense and the reads. Making the right reads and playing in space. It's a learning process.

I mean, it's a big task. He's playing a bunch of minutes, you gotta play both sides of the ball.

You've got alot of mouths to feed out there, so to speak. He's handling it well."

VanVleet joined the Rockets' broadcast, alongside Craig Ackerman and Ryan Hollins and was asked if the point guard skill is something that is naturally given.

"If you don't have it naturally, you get it by trial and error.

I think that's what Amen is going through right now. You just don't want it to take away from his aggressiveness, but all in all, I think he's done a great job."