THE CROWD FELL silent after hearing the dead thud of the back of Amen Thompson‘s head bouncing off the hardwood at Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix.
But it was the other side of Thompson’s head that took the worst of the play.
Backpedaling in transition, Thompson tried to establish position at the rim defending Phoenix Suns center Nick Richards, who outweighs him by nearly 50 pounds. As Richards launched for a dunk, his right elbow smashed flush against Thompson’s chin, sending the guard skyward off both feet, while opening a gash that the Rockets guard told ESPN required “a different kind of tape” to seal.
“[It was] good he could bounce back and not roll around and act like he’s dead and get back in and play,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka deadpanned.
The blow felt to Thompson “like somebody jumped out the floor and uppercut me.”
As Houston’s medical staff worked on the bench bandaging Thompson, center Alperen Sengun dropped Suns guard Collin Gillespie near the left wing with a crushing ball screen, resulting in an offensive foul. Thompson missed just two minutes of play getting patched up on a chippy night in which Houston’s young two-way key contributors combined for 46 points, 12 rebounds, 13 assists and a pair of blocks.
The duo connected just three minutes and 11 seconds into the game. A driving Reed Sheppard hit a cutting Thompson for what seemed like a guaranteed alley-oop dunk, but instead of using his elite athleticism to slam it home, Thompson skipped a bounce pass through the lane to Sengun waiting outside the 3-point line at the top of the key.
Swish.
“I always know where Amen is,” Sengun told ESPN as he leaned back in a courtside seat in Phoenix. “I get a lot of double teams in a game, and Amen is always finding space to get open. He’s quite amazing, actually.”
As a duo, Thompson and Sengun are averaging 40.8 points this season, compared to 33.2 points in 2024-25. The Rockets outscore opponents by 6.0 points per game when Thompson and Sengun are on the court together, a 2.2-point increase from last season.
Kevin Durant’s arrival in Houston raised expectations, but they likely won’t be met without the continued growth of Thompson and Sengun. The young duo, 22 and 23, respectively, has played the most minutes this season together of any Rockets pair, per ESPN Research. They’ve also formed a budding chemistry that threatens to take the league by storm for years to come.
“One of the best things about KD is he wants the young guys to lead,” Thompson said. “He doesn’t want us to just look for him. He tells me all the time, ‘You can’t play basketball like that. You’ve got to go do what you’ve got to do.’ So, sometimes KD would just go and let me and Alpi do what we’ve got to do. When it’s KD’s time, he’ll tell you.”
WHILE THE YOUNG duo is closely connected on the court, their development hinges on the work they put in 6,000 miles apart in the summer: Thompson in the United States and Sengun in his native Turkey.
Now in his fifth NBA season, the 6-foot-11 Sengun has spent the past two summers training in Istanbul with Rockets assistant Cam Hodges. Sengun describes Hodges as a serious no-nonsense coach like Udoka, with whom the player development specialist had worked previously at stops in San Antonio and Philadelphia.
At a breakfast in early June before they began their first workout of the summer of 2024, Sengun expressed his goals to Hodges: a winning season, an All-Star nod and a berth in the postseason.
“I have goals that I want to make come true,” Sengun said. “So, I know dreams [are] not going to come true by me just saying it. I’ve got to work. Cam is a tough guy, too. He [pushed] me hard even sometimes when I didn’t want to do anything. He just [pushed] me harder and harder.”
Over the course of seven weeks that summer, Hodges and Sengun focused on the center’s body, his eating habits, his approach to the game and discipline.
Sengun’s days started with a visit with his physiotherapist, followed by breakfast, which consists of menemen (Turkish scrambled eggs with tomatoes and peppers) sopped up with pieces of simit (a Turkish bread covered with sesame seeds) along with olives, cucumbers and fresh cheeses. Sengun paired it with strong Turkish coffee, which he calls one of his favorite treats.
The on-court work commenced at 10 a.m. and lasted approximately two hours on most days. From there, Sengun would take a 15-minute break to rehydrate with water and electrolytes, followed by a strength and conditioning session in the weight room. After lunch and a nap, Sengun and Hodges returned to the gym at 7:30 or 8 p.m. for another two hours of skill work that involved mostly shooting with no contact.
Sengun accomplished all his goals last season, leaving him starving for more. So he and Hodges dialed up the intensity leading into this season.
If Sengun missed consecutive free throws in a session, Hodges instructed him to run laps around the gym in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district. Of the 48 days of training, 36 involved twice-a-day workouts for five days a week — sometimes seven because that’s what it would take to reach the levels Sengun aspires to.
Veteran guard Fred VanVleet also joined Sengun in late July for a week in Istanbul to help him perfect pick-and-roll actions and screen angles. They took part in 3-on-3 and 5-on-5 pickup sessions against members of the Turkish national team.
The taxing but simultaneously relaxing summer grind helped Sengun flash a preview of what was to come this season at FIBA EuroBasket 2025, when he led Turkey to the final, averaging 21.6 points, 10.1 rebounds and 6.6 assists. Rockets staff wanted Sengun to whittle down his arsenal offensively and simplify his game so he could make faster decisions.
“Every season I’m trying to put something new in my game, and since Ime came here after my third season, I would say last summer, actually, I was putting [in] a lot of work on defense just to get better,” Sengun said. “This summer, I was just working on that and finishing around the rim better. Obviously, we have KD now. So, it’s a lot of space for me out there and I can just go finish without trying to get a foul or anything. That’s what Ime tells me all the time, ‘Don’t look for the foul, just go strong.’ I’m just trying to get away from my bad habits and be better.”
Meanwhile, back in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Houston, Thompson — nicknamed “Twin” by teammates — spent his summer toiling with assistant Ben Sullivan. The third-year Rockets coach likens the guard to the queen on a chessboard because he can be moved around on the floor and maneuver in ways the other players can’t.
“He tells me that one of my gifts is my versatility, that I can be anywhere,” Thompson said.
Like Sengun, Thompson worked a hectic summer schedule of two-a-day sessions five to seven days a week, “depending on how my body reacted,” he said, refining his ballhandling and shooting touch while trying to develop a better floater.
Thompson articulated goals over the summer for making the All-Defensive Team for the second time and the All-Star squad while helping the Rockets legitimately compete for a championship. The 22-year-old also participated in offseason shooting sessions in Los Angeles with Olin Simplis, known in the player development industry as “the guard whisperer.” Simplis worked with Thompson on shooting consistency, footwork and subtle tricks for creating space off the dribble.
“I feel very comfortable he’s going to get to where he wants to be and where we want him to get because he’s going to put in the work,” Rockets general manager Rafael Stone told ESPN. “That’s just the natural progression of these young players. They figure this thing out and they move on to that thing. That’s all Amen is doing. Defense comes easy to him. He’s competitive as hell. So, I’m very unworried about him.”
Following the example set by Durant certainly helps.
“The first time I saw KD work out, I thought I worked hard,” Thompson said. “He’s telling me ‘Go game speed [from the] first rep.’ I thought I was going game speed. But there are levels to it. For a guy to be as good as he is and as skilled as he is, he works so efficiently and so hard. I’ve been watching him my whole life. I never thought I was going to be on a team with him. I didn’t know he was [still] going to be playing. So, I feel like it’s just full circle seeing him kill on TV, and now I get to see it in real life.”
0:32
Kevin Durant hits 31,000-point milestone with jumper
Kevin Durant becomes the eighth player in NBA history to reach 31,000 points.
ELEVEN DAYS AFTER getting his chin busted open in Phoenix in a game in which he scored 28 points, Thompson enacted revenge against the Suns in Houston by pouring in a season-high 31 points on 12-of-17 shooting. That same night Durant became the eighth player in NBA history to reach 31,000 career points — about 24,000 more than Sengun and Thompson have combined.
Sengun, who sat out that night due to an illness, returned Thursday in a win over the LA Clippers. He recorded his third consecutive 20-point double-double, tying for the longest such streak of his career. Thompson scored 12 of his 20 points in the final frame that night, including a three-point play with 17.2 seconds remaining to seal the victory.
Before that matchup, Sengun and Thompson had executed 22 pick-and-rolls with the big man as the ball handler and the guard as the screener, according to GeniusIQ, compared to 22 such plays all of last season. Houston scored 1.01 points in 2024-25 per direct pick in that scenario, but just 0.50 points so far this season.
Thompson told ESPN the connection with Sengun developed during his second season when Houston first started playing him in the dunker spot. Thompson has brought up the ball on 33 possessions per game this season as the point guard, before often relocating to the dunker spot to wreak havoc.
“I just started learning how to cut off of [Sengun],” Thompson said. “He started pulling me to the side at shootaround [to tell me to] do this and that. That’s [been since] my rookie year. We talk about it all the time, go to dinner, talk about stuff we could do.”
Durant calls the budding chemistry between Thompson and Sengun “incredible.” Sengun ranks as one of two players in the NBA averaging at least 23 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists, according to ESPN Research, joining Nikola Jokic. Sengun is on pace to register career highs in points per game (23.5), assists (7.1) and 3-point field goal percentage (35%).
Sengun also generates 8.8 points per game from isolation this season, which ranks sixth behind James Harden (14.1), Doncic (10.6), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (13.5), Jaylen Brown (11.0) and Julius Randle (9.6). Sengun has tossed dimes for 16 of Thompson’s dunks this season, good for the 10th-most assists on slams to a single player.
“He sees him pretty much all the time underneath the rim,” Durant said. “He’s thrown a couple of no-look lobs to him as well. So, I think he understands where Twin is going to be at all times and Twin sees Alpi as an opportunity to get behind the defense and make plays. We’re going to need that going forward.”
Thompson, meanwhile, is averaging career highs in scoring (17.3 PPG), assists (5.3) and free throw percentage (81%). But his shooting numbers from the field are down due in part to higher usage. The 6-foot-7 Thompson remains elite defensively, limiting opponents to 41% from the field as the contesting defender, which registers as 10th among more than 125 players to defend 200 shots this season, according to Genius IQ.
Thompson led the league last season in that category.
“His job is changing,” Sengun said. “He’s handling the ball more now. He’s understanding the game better every day. He sees the court better. The first day he came here, we all saw the vision he has, the passing ability, athleticism and everything. He’s just put in the work like the rest of us do.”
One thing Thompson tires of discussing, however, is potential. Fidgeting with a T-shirt in the locker room postgame after Houston’s medical staff patched up his chin again with a butterfly bandage, Thompson apologized, saying, “my bad I’m talking like this,” his voice left weak by Richards’ punishing elbow.
“It was fun to talk about, exciting seeing all that stuff about potential, duh, duh, duh,” he said. “At this point, I’ve got to prove it. I’ve got to do it, be consistent, give my team a chance to win every night, and not worry about potential. I’m in the now. Alpi, that’s my brother. I know what he’s going to do. I know where he wants me to be.”
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon contributed to this story.
