Is Amen Thompson the Michael Jordan of Bruce Browns?
The underutilization of the Rockets' all-position player and the rarity of change in the NBA
Change, as we say, is inevitable. Except, in the NBA, change isn’t inevitable — in fact, it’s often completely absent.
Of course, I’m not talking about year-to-year changes in performance, as we’re used to that. Instead, I’m talking about the fact that most players play the same position and same role now as they did in college and, often, in high school. Ja Morant has always been a guard, Giannis has always been a power forward and occasional center, and you’d never mistake Yuki Kawamura for a small forward, though he is indeed small. Part of that is because of physical limitations, while another part of it is based on a player’s innate skills. Yet, what happens when a player’s skills and role don’t match up? Or, going a step further, what happens when a player has too many skills, if there is such a thing?
That question is one that appears to be plaguing the Houston Rockets right now, particularly in relation to Amen Thompson. Thomspon, who is currently 21 years old, was seen as a jumbo guard in high school and at the upstart Overtime Elite league. Now, though, his role has shifted in multiple ways — and it’s arguable that the Rockets are still failing to use his skills and abilities, and I have the data to prove it. And maybe, just maybe, Amen Thompson needs to be the Michael Jordan of Bruce Browns to succeed. But first, an analysis of how the Rockets are using the rangy Thompson twin…
Cut and Dry, In A Way
If you were to take away any info about Thompson other than his physical metrics, you could get a good idea of how the Rockets might use him. Amen is 6’7”, has a 7-foot wingspan, and once recorded a 44-inch vertical leap. His lateral movement, as it stands, is about as good as you can get at his height. With that information in mind, you could deduce that his role is one of the following:
A defensive disruptor on and off the ball
An off-ball cutter
A lob threat
Makes sense, in theory, right? The problem is, he’s only two of those things, at least in his current role.
Defensive disruptor? Check. He currently ranks in the 98th percentile for defensive EPM, per Dunks and Threes.
Off-ball cutter? Check — though not in the way you’d want. According to the NBA’s tracking data, 15.5% of Amen’s possessions involve cutting to the basket, yet he ranks in the abysmal 5th percentile for points per play.
A lob threat? Unfortunately not, as he’s recorded—checks notes—one alley-oop this season. This, in essence, seems to be what is limiting his ability to cut to the basket effectively, even if the Rockets insist on having him stand on the wing and do it all the time:
Of course, if you’ve watched any Rockets games, you know that this isn’t really his main thing anyway. What I left out of his physical descriptors earlier was the fact that his ball-handling skills are above average for his size and, as I mentioned, Amen was a guard during his Overtime Elite days. Hence, the Rockets are using him a lot as a secondary ball-handler in the pick and roll, which has been…lackluster.
According to the NBA’s tracking data, Amen ranks in just the 13th percentile in pick and roll ball-handling and is shooting around 40% on P&R shot attempts as a result. It isn’t that his ball-handling is bad or his passing is terrible — quite the contrary, actually — but the Rockets haven’t quite cracked the code of the Amen Thompson/Alperen Sengun pick and roll.
Outside of the struggle there and the unsatisfactory cutting efficiency, Amen has been a scintillating watch. He’s one of the best rebounding guards in the league, ranking top-10 out of all guards in rebounding percentage, and has been tearing up the court on defense alongside fellow Rocket Tari Eason — though mostly off the ball, making his role very different from the on-ball one he focused on in high school.
But to avoid burying the lede here, what you might not realize about Thompson’s already-solid play for the Rockets is that they’re using him entirely wrong. To explain that, it’s important to look at a seemingly unrelated player’s path to relevance: Bruce Brown.
Bruce Brown’s Rare Shift
While current Toronto Raptor Bruce Brown hasn’t played at all this season after undergoing knee surgery, it’s likely that his name rings a bell due to his play for both the Nets and 2023 champion Nuggets. He’s long been seen as almost the perfect role player for the modern NBA, swapping between PG, SG, SF, and PF, and even the occasional small-ball center role seemingly at will. His 6’4” frame and physical limitations seemingly didn’t matter — he was simply effective. What some may not remember, however, is Bruce Brown wasn’t supposed to be an SF, PF, or C. Instead, he was supposed to be a point guard.
Brown played for Miami in college and played the point guard role for the majority of his two-year collegiate career, averaging 11 points and 4 assists in his second year. Similar to Amen, he was a very good rebounder, especially for his height, averaging over 7 boards in his final collegiate season.
His physical limitations — he’s not a jumbo guard and doesn’t have consistent verticality despite recording a 38-inch vertical — and his inability to shoot consistently, however, saw him slide to the middle of the second round, being banished to the Pistons as a result (poor guy).
Soon, the Pistons would thrust him into a similar role, though a little bit more off the ball at first. In his second year in the league, Brown split minutes between PG and SG, showcasing his skills as an offensive hub across the board:
And yet, in that second year, his play would be generally poor. He ranked below the 35th percentile in nearly every offensive metric Cleaning The Glass has to offer, including points per 100 possessions, turnover percentage, and every defensive metric known to man. His physical limitations made him a less effective ball-handler in the pick and roll without a high-flying big to back him up and he didn’t thrive off the ball, either. Soon, he’d be traded to Brooklyn, in what was seen as a move that could have made Brown a fringe NBA player. After all, a sub-33% three-point shooter without physical tools to effectively play defense or become a true first option was on the short end of the stick already, he couldn’t shoot consistently, and the Pistons had essentially given up on him. So what did Brown do? He made a shift — arguably the biggest one in recent NBA history, not counting Brook Lopez’s new penchant for three-point shooting.
In his first year with Brooklyn, the positional shift was fascinating to watch. After playing two seasons as a guard, he suddenly played 100% of his minutes at either SF or PF and ranked in the 91st percentile for effectiveness in the former. He even cleaned up his inconsistent shooting for a time, hitting threes at over 40% and shooting nearly 60% on two-pointers. Somehow, the point guard with a questionable future had become indispensable for the Nets. Crucially, he did something wild: He swapped his identity in the pick and roll from ball-handler to a roll man.
Per the NBA’s playtype data, Brown spent nearly 30% of his possessions with the Pistons as a ball-handler in the P&R yet ranked in the 24th percentile in points per play. Post-trade, Brown nearly rejected the ball-handler role in the P&R and turned into an effective roll man (at 6’4”, no less), ranking about average in effectiveness:
It cannot be understated how big of a shift this was. For a 6’4” player to come onto a team and play the power forward position, let alone an actual roll man, seemed counterintuitive. Thankfully, Brown came along at a time when the NBA was shifting to positionless basketball, but it’s arguable that he somewhat perfected the role, culminating in his do-every-position performance for the Nuggets.
So where am I going with this? Well, I think Amen Thompson isn’t actually all that different from Bruce Brown — in fact, he might actually be the absolute best version of him.
Just Keep Rolling
As I mentioned, Amen has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as Brown, save for a few. He has a good handle, can play the offensive engine role, and, notably, cannot shoot for his life. What he has over the current Raptor, however, is athleticism and height, which allows him to be even more effective at the role that Brown eventually played.
According to Second Spectrum, Amen Thompson ranks below the 20th percentile in picks set per 100 possessions. What this tells us is that Amen Thompson is usually not the roll man in P&R situations. As the data showed earlier, he’s been a ball-handler the majority of the time, so this isn’t surprising. Here’s the kicker, though: He ranks in the 87th percentile in points per play, which is, quite frankly, wild. While those points aren’t coming off of easy alley-oop attempts, they’re ones in which Amen has the chance to utilize his ridiculous vertical and overall coordination, often resulting in plays like these:
The most intriguing combo involves Alperen Sengun, effectively manifesting the Nikola Jokic-like point guard play from the big man and letting Amen roll his way to the basket instead — it’s seemingly counterintuitive and a strange role-reversal, but it works like a charm:
Because Amen is both a good passer and roller, teams can’t double him. If they do, he’ll kick the ball out to the perimeter to guys like Jalen Green and Fred VanVleet — which is something that Bruce Brown did a marvelous job during his Nets days:
Amen, unlike Brown, has the advantage of both height and athleticism, turning him into a superpowered version of the former Nets forward/center/guard/everything-guy.
So why don’t the Rockets run the roll man play every single time for Amen? Some of that could be a non-realization from the team’s end, but it’s likely more due to the fact that it doesn’t work against certain teams — and because Amen needs to improve his shooting.
Some teams have their big men drop back into the paint against Amen, effectively daring him to shoot from beyond the arc. Seeing as he’s shooting a paltry 26% from range, that’s a pretty good strategy, and it’s one that essentially mitigates Amen’s effectiveness as a roll man.
Take the Hornets, for example. Nick Richards, who is currently averaging over 2 blocks per game, often plays in drop coverage — which is just a fancy way of saying that he stays in the paint to defend against the roll man in a P&R. Hence, he’s ready for Amen to roll to the basket and effectively closes off the lane. As a result, Amen takes his shot early as a floater to try to get around Richards, an effort that goes in vain here:
This becomes a problem against bigs who are mobile enough to back into the paint quickly as well, though that’s a difficult conundrum to solve for any player; just look at how players are unable to get past guys like Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren.
The solution here, of course, would be for Amen to learn how to shoot. Yet, his jumper is much more broken than Bruce Brown’s ever was and it would take a miracle for him to become a 35%+ three-point shooter. Additionally, for all of his verticality in athleticism, he isn’t much of a vertical threat in the sense of grabbing alley-oops in the pick and roll. That, thankfully, seems like the more likely change and would make him a whole other monster when it comes to his efficiency as a roll man.
Regardless, the pieces are here for something truly special. Amen has the chance to become the same kind of positionless player that Bruce Brown became with absurdly better defense and the frame to actually back up the rest of his game. I mean, imagine if Bruce Brown could do this:
In other words, should he continue shifting his game and evolving as a player, you’re looking at the Michael Jordan of Bruce Browns.