The NBA dog days of summer are slowly coming to an end as training camp kicks off in less than a month and preseason games are a little over a month away. The Houston Rockets will most likely start training camp on September 29th, though it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Normally, there isn’t much NBA news this time of year, with MLB inching closer to the playoffs and the NFL and NCAA beginning their new season. However, the NBA has dominated the conversation the last couple of days, first starting with the NBA coming down hard on the Los Angeles Clippers for circumventing the salary cap in the Kawhi Leonard deal.
Houston Rockets Extend Amen Thompson, Signing the Young Star Through 2032
Thursday, another story dropped, first reported by Shams Charania of ESPN, and it is much happier news if you are a Houston Rockets fan, and specifically if you are Amen Thompson. The Rockets have reportedly signed Amen Thompson to a five-year, $208 million rookie-scale contract extension.
The deal includes no player or team option, so Thompson will be with the Rockets through the 2032 season. Several reports say Thompson’s deal will be ascending, meaning it will start at around $35 million a year and finish at around $42 million a year in the final year of the deal.
Both sides seem to have come out well with this deal. Thompson is now the second-highest-paid player on the team, only behind Kevin Durant, at the same time the Rockets were able to sign Thompson for well under a max contract, which made it a no-brainer for the franchise.
Since being drafted by the Rockets fourth overall in the 2023 draft, Thompson has become one of the league’s top defenders, making an All-NBA Defensive Team in 2025. Thompson is coming off his best scoring and assist season of his career, in which he averaged a career-high 18.3 points and 5.3 assists per game. Thompson has become irreplaceable for the Rockets, taking over last season as their defensive leader and taking on a bigger offensive role with Fred VanVleet missing the entire season.
Now going into season four, Thompson is looking to go from an up-and-coming young star to a legitimate two-way star player. Of course, there is room for improvement when it comes to his jump shot and becoming a better overall scorer, but Thompson has already shown that he has star potential written all over him.
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