Amen Thompson and Alperen Şengün’s struggling percentages spark concern as Houston looks to their future. Explore the data behind these shooting woes and the potential for improvement.
The NBA world was rocked this weekend with news of former Miami Heat teammates getting into an altercation. Apparently Tyler Herro’s face was rocked as well, as covered on Roundtable.
While the Heat were at the center of this, it all stems from a statistical graphic that also shows a glaring issue for the Houston Rockets. As seen below, it’s displaying players with the lowest mid-range shooting percentage:
https://www.instagram.com/wonderdiditGiannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo ranked as the worst and tenth-worst from mid-range, but two Rockets were eerily close. Amen Thompson and Alperen Şengün aren’t much better, as second and eighth-lowest in the league.
It’s not impossible to make that combination work, as Houston has won 52 games in each of the past two seasons. Kevin Durant is also elite in that area (48.2-percent), per NBA Stats, so that can offset any poor shooting.
Durant won’t be around forever, though, and two non-shooters are going to be the future of this franchise. Those numbers are concerning.
Just based on the eye test, I felt like Thompson was stepping into mid-range jumpers with a lot more confidence. To be fair, there is a good reason for that.
Despite finishing with a career low percentage (27.8), he still shot and made more mid-range jumpshots than in any other season. After only making eight out of 27 as a rookie, he bumped it up to 26/68 as a sophomore.
From 29.6-percent to 38.2-percent on more than twice as many attempts. He again increased his attempts to 108 this season, draining 30 of those. It’s clear his confidence is going up, even if the percentages didn’t.
Now through three seasons, he’s shot 31.5-percent on only 203 total attempts. Given his improvement and impressive free throw shooting, I have some faith he could become more consistent.
Unfortunately I can’t say the same about Alperen Şengün. He had a bit of a down year from the mid-range, but he’s never excelled there to begin with. He also really struggles at the free throw line, still below 70-percent for his career.
In the 2024-2025 season he shot a couple of percentage points higher, but only made one more shot on four less attempts compared to this season. The difference is almost negligible, but changes the percent from 35.5 to 37.7.
Even going back to his lower volume seasons, he has still always floated in that same range. 38.5-percent, 37.5-percent, and an outlier rookie season where he shot 23.5-percent on 17 attempts.
He is just not a very solid mid-range shooter, despite it being a substantial part of his game. On the other hand, Thompson isn’t much better, but has more room to grow. He also bumped up his free throw percentage by nearly 10 points.
I can certainly understand why one was deemed untouchable, while the other is apparently expendable.
