The Houston Rockets have stockpiled a remarkable group of young players over the last few years. They’ve selected in the draft’s top 5 for four consecutive seasons. That’s a lot of blue-chip young talent.
So, it’s shocking that their best young player has been the 16th overall pick.
Yet, Alperen Sengun has outshined everyone. With his combination of dominant interior scoring and passing creativity, he’s developed into a bonafide offensive hub for the Rockets. Sengun is one of the brightest young stars in the league.
It doesn’t seem that ESPN agrees. They just ranked Sengun as the 54th-best player in the NBA. That’s comically low.
Here are three players who had no business being ranked ahead of him.
Excuse me?
Sure, Barrett demonstrated growth after getting traded to his hometown Raptors at last year’s deadline. He may have needed a change of scenery. Still, Sengun’s Box Plus/Minus (BPM) of 4.9 puts Barrett’s mark of 0.1 over his time with the Raptors to shame.
Put differently, even during the best stretch of Barrett’s career, he’s considerably far from Sengun’s level. Otherwise, he’s been a net negative by BPM – and any other metric you’ll find – for his entire career. We have no idea what ESPN was thinking here. Barrett has remaining potential, but no coherent argument would place him ahead of Sengun.
The same indignation won’t apply to DeRozan. He’s been a star in this league for a long time. ESPN may be giving him a respectful nod with their ranking of him on this list.
Besides, there are understandable reasons to be apprehensive about Sengun. He struggles as both a floor spacer and a defender. Wait a minute!
We’re comparing him to DeMar DeRozan, aren’t we?
He shares both of those shortcomings. Meanwhile, his BPM of 1.8 last year wasn’t particularly impressive either. DeRozan is likely to continue to decline at his age, while Sengun should only improve. He was better than DeRozan last year, and the gulf should only widen in 2024-25.
A couple of years ago, you could have made a case for Murray. He’d earned a reputation as one of the best defensive guards in the NBA. Unfortunately, his defense suffered major slippage in 2023-24.
Sure, his shot developed. Murray is a better shooter than Sengun. With a 1.7 BPM, it doesn’t seem like that shooting resulted in on-court impact for Murray in 2023-24.
Besides – Murray isn’t a Derrick White type. He’s not darting around screens to get open for threes. He’s still a ball-dominant player, and if BPM is any indication, he wasn’t as good with the ball as Sengun was in 2023-24.
So why would he rank ahead of him on this list?
