Rockets' Amen Thompson Ranks as NBA's Ninth-Best Third Option

Amen Thompson enters the 2025-26 season in a much different predicament than he's seen thus far in his NBA career. Not only does he have an important role for the Houston Rockets, he's also ascended into one of the league's bright, young stars.

Especially when talking about two-way players.

Thompson's role will be much larger than originally expected for the Rockets, as he's the most seamless replacement option for the injured Fred VanVleet.

Granted, the Rockets won't be able to replace VanVleet with an internal one-for-one option, as no one else has quite his skillset on the roster. It's also difficult for a team with title aspirations to punt on $25 million in salary.

Especially a team facing the hard cap.

However, Thompson has traits that VanVleet (and most other NBA players) simply don't have. He's unstoppable when attacking and getting downhill, as he's in the top percent of athletes in the league.

He's also already become one of the league's best defenders in short time.

And he's still scratching the surface of his potential.

Yahoo Sports senior NBA writer Ben Rohrbach has been ranking the hierarchy around the league (i.e. best star, best co-star, best third option) and ranked Thompson as the league's ninth-best third option.

Thompson was one spot behind New York Knicks standout Mikal Bridges and ahead of Utah Jazz big man Rudy Gobert and Los Angeles Lakers wing Austin Reaves.

Based on his larger than anticipated role, Thompson could easily catapult to the top of the list. Certainly if he improves offensively.

Most of the discourse centered around his weaknesses tends to be about his need to develop an outside shooting stroke. Understandably so, as you wouldn't want your primary facilitator to not be able to shoot.

Defenses will sag off.

Thompson's worked on that aspect of his game and we've seen the results this preseason, to the tune of 66.7 percent from three. He even changed his shooting motion and it looked seamless, while most shooting modifications tend to initially appear clunky and take a while to fully transform.

Thompson’s handle will still need work, however. He's oftentimes careless with the ball and gets stripped by the defense on a regular. He put emphasis on that throughout the summer but the preseason showing didn't quite indicate that.

If he's going to take on an additional responsibility of playmaking and ballhandling, he'll need to tighten up a bit there.