When news broke that Fred VanVleet tore his ACL during a summer workout, which will likely cost him the entire 2025-26 season, two names immediately came to mind for Rockets fans. The first was Reed Sheppard, the 2024 No. 3 overall pick who didn’t do much as a rookie but suddenly finds himself in position to potentially play a vital role on a possible championship contender.
The second was Amen Thompson, who, unlike Sheppard, has already declared himself one of the league’s most unique weapons and fastest rising stars entering his third season. Barring a trade for an established point guard, both Sheppard and Thompson are going to get their chance to run the show.
What Sheppard does with this opportunity will be interesting, but what Thompson does with it will be fascinating. It feels like it could be the start to a rewrite of one of the most unique stories in NBA history: The Ben Simmons story.
With Simmons, given the way his career started and, for all intents and purposes, ended, we’re always going to wonder what could’ve been. Thompson has a chance to answer that question now that the ball is going to be in his hands more.
It’s not that Thompson isn’t destined for stardom as an off-ball player. He is. It’s just that in that role, he feels like a younger version of older Andre Iguodala. With control of an offense, he screams Simmons. The physical comps are undeniable. Tremendously gifted athletes with elite positional size to dominate defensively, pilot fast breaks, and attack the paint as either finisher or facilitator.
| Ben Simmons | 17.8 | 9.3 | 8.1 | 56.3% |
| Amen Thompson | 15.7 | 9.1 | 4.3 | 55.7% |
The most obvious similarity is the shooting handicap, but in Thompson’s case, he’s not an unwilling shooter and there are already signs that he’s trending toward at least competency and perhaps a lot more than that as a short pull-up threat.
Still, if we assume that shooting — particularly from deep — is never going to be a strength for Thompson, then he was likely always going to require a shift to a heavier playmaking role to pursue his optimal career outcome. The opportunity just wasn’t expected to come this soon.
At 6-feet-7, Thompson isn’t as tall as the 6-10 Simmons, but if he has to be defended by opposing point guards — as opposed to wings — in what could be gigantic lineups with him at the top of the offense, the impact of his size stands to be similar. He’s a better athlete than peak Simmons. He’s a better defender than peak Simmons. He’s a more ferocious finisher.
Right now, it would be a stretch to say Thompson possesses peak Simmons’ playmaking chops, but that’s the part we’re all waiting to see in larger samples. There’s already plenty of evidence that he can get there in short order. In 15 games with VanVleet sidelined from early February to early March last season, Thompson averaged nearly six assists per game as the team’s primary ball-handler.
Simmons and Thompson are not clones. From a pure athletic force standpoint, Thompson might end up looking more like a taller Russell Westbrook, which is terrifying in a whole different way. But just in terms of uniqueness, we had never seen a player like Simmons — a guy who could do what he could at his size. A guy to whom the modern “you have to be a shooter to dominate as a point guard” rule didn’t apply. In a league where so many point guards were starting to play roughly the same way, Simmons was different.
So is Thompson. There is nobody in the league who plays like him other than his twin brother, Ausar. And now, with the ball in his hands more, he’s going to have a chance to pick up the story that Simmons — just as it was starting to get good — abruptly quit writing.
If we’re lucky, Thompson will give us at least an idea of how it could’ve ended.