I know you\u2019re tired of reading about Amen Thompson\u2019s jump shot.<\/p>\n
The Houston Rockets aren\u2019t immune to the usual offseason fare. Everyone\u2019s stronger, everyone\u2019s got the right mindset, and most importantly, everyone has improved their jump shot.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
Cynicism aside, there\u2019s reason to be optimistic about the Rockets. Many of their key players are young, so improvement is expected. Just don\u2019t go into 2026-27 expecting Thompson to morph into a knockdown three-point shooter.<\/p>\n
What is a reasonable expectation for the youngster?<\/p>\n
Rockets\u2019 Thompson can improve his shot<\/p>\n
The Gold Standard for a wing improving his jumper is Kawhi Leonard, but actually, Leonard\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Of course, he worked with Chip Engelland before his rookie year.<\/p>\n
In college, Leonard shot 25.0% from three-point range. So, that\u2019s at least a bit of Engelland proof of concept that\u2019s directly applicable to Thompson.<\/p>\n
Skeptics will point out that Leonard is an outlier case, and they will be 100.0% correct. It\u2019s rare for such a poor shooter to make such an improvement.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t start consistently shooting around league average until his 9th NBA season (age 27).<\/p>\n
Need a less GOAT-ish example? Tobias Harris hit 26.1% of his rookie season threes and wasn\u2019t very good until his sixth year (age 25).<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where Thompson is a weird case. At 21, he was an older rookie. So he\u2019s heading into age 24 season, and it\u2019ll be his fourth year.<\/p>\n
The (very limited set of) data here doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s also worked with Engelland, but most who\u2019ve found success with him started earlier, whether in college or their first couple of NBA seasons.<\/p>\n
So, long and short, this has been an exercise in futility. It\u2019s unknowable. Some will also point out that Thompson\u2019s jumper will be perhaps Engelland\u2019s greatest challenge yet.<\/p>\n
The reality is that Thompson is likely to never be a \u201cgood\u201d shooter. The objective is to get him to a place where a wide-open three is a good shot for the Rockets\u2019 offense. Here\u2019s a (not very) fun fact: Thompson shot 21.6% from deep last year. When he was designated as wide open by NBA.com? Yup:<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the same number. This suggests that the vast majority of Thompson\u2019s threes were wide open. That\u2019s 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:<\/p>\n
Although unfortunately, not reason enough to stop writing about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I know you\u2019re tired of reading about Amen Thompson\u2019s jump shot. The Houston Rockets aren\u2019t immune to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,78714,78716,85],"class_list":["post-910885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-player-analysis","tag-rockets-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}