Houston Rockets are Alperen Sengun's team now / News - Basketnews.com

After two years in which the team went through a major rebuild, the Houston Rockets are now entering a new phase. One of the main reasons for this early success is the fact that Alperen Sengun has become the pivotal point of the offense.

Credit: Getty Images via AFP - Scanpix Credit Getty Images via AFP - Scanpix

The saying, "third time's the charm," perfectly fits the current Houston Rockets situation. During the 2020-21 season, the Rockets decided to trade James Harden, who had become unsatisfied with his situation in Texas.

Alperen Sengun

MIN:32.77PTS:20.21 (58.11%)REB:9.07As:5.64ST:0.93BL:0.71TO:2.79GM:14ProfileNBA2023/2024

Thanks to that trade, Houston officially entered a rebuilding mode. They started to accumulate draft picks to build for a better future, moving away from their veterans and switching their focus to a long-term project.

Armed with multiple draft picks, in the 2021 NBA Draft, the Rockets selected Turkish big man Alperen Sengun with the 16th pick overall.

Sengun was one of the best international prospects available in that draft, and the Rockets really believed in his potential to the point they sacrificed two future first-rounders to acquire him via trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Sengun arrived in the United States without knowing how to speak English and on a team chock-full of young people with little or no immediate chance of competing.

As was largely predictable, in his first two years in Houston, the Rockets were among the worst teams in the league, winning 44 games in two seasons, being the worst team in the Western Conference in both seasons.

However, the Turkish player showed many of his qualities during his first two seasons in the NBA, which earned him the name "young Jokic" from many fans in the league.

Alperen SengunCredit AP-Scanpix

After all, the Turkish player's skillset has always had similarities with the Serbian star, who praised the Turk last season and suggested the Rockets rely more on him on offense.

But the Rockets, after two years of total rebuilding, approached the last offseason with a completely different mindset, raising the bar of ambition.

In fact, the Texas franchise decided to invest heavily in free agency, seeking to bring more experienced profiles to the team.

Alperen Sengun

Team:Houston RocketsPosition:PF, CAge:21Height:211 cmWeight:110 kgBirth place:TurkeyProfileNewsStatistics

The Rockets managed to recruit Fred VanVleetand a veteran with great experience like Jeff Green, who had just won the NBA title with the Denver Nuggets.

They also signed Dillon Brooks to a multi-year deal after the swingman had fallen out of favor in Memphis.

Even Jabari Smith Jr., one of the key members of the Rockets' young core, had made it clear that Houston was ready to take a leap forward in a chat he had with BasketNews over the summer.

"I think we're definitely in the right direction, we wanna start the season just implementing ourselves into the league, just showing that we are one of those teams that are hungry, that they want to be in the playoffs," Smith told BasketNews back in June.

"We want to really compete in this league. We've been in a rebuilding phase, but now we want to get out of that stage, and we want to start winning," he added.

A desire certainly also shared by the Rockets' ownership, which, not surprisingly, also decided to hire a top coach like Ime Udoka to bring Houston back among the best teams in the league.

And according to this early season, the Rockets' plan seems to be working. Compared to the previous two years, Houston is a much more dangerous team and, after almost a month of the regular season, is in the middle of the playoffs with an 8-6 record.

Following such a solid start to the Rockets season, don't forget to check their odds in the best online sportsbook.

In his third year with the Rockets, it appears that Sengun is poised to become the main focus of this team.

In these first 14 games played by Houston, Sengun is putting together some very impressive numbers. The Turkish big man is averaging 20.2 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per game while shooting 56.7% from the field.

These are the best numbers of his career so far, and his maturity on the court is remarkable, considering that we are still talking about a 21-year-old.

When Sengun is on the court, the Rockets are simply a better team. Houston outscores opponents by 10.9 points per 100 possessions when the Turkish player is on the court.

The figure changes completely when Sengun is on the bench. The Rockets are outscored by 5.1 points per 100 possessions in the minutes without him.

Before the start of the season, Sengun stated that he would play a bigger role this year and that he would also try to do more on defense, which until now had always been his main weakness.

"I believe I'm going to help my team more this year, play better defense for sure; I will give my all on defense while making better shots on offense. I am going to do my best this year. The first two years did not go so well. But this year, we have the hunger to win", the Turkish big man stated.

Although his defensive ability is not yet at the level the Rockets would like, the improvements over the past two seasons are there. Sengun is more aggressive this year, and the change in effort level is evident.

Head coach Udoka wants Sengun to be more aggressive on pick-and-roll coverages, but the thing that is helping Sengun the most on defense is the change in mentality the whole team has.

With the arrival of two players like Brooks and VanVleet, both of whom can bring a lot of pressure on the ball and disturb the passing lanes, their additions helped hide some of the limitations of Sengun, who lacks great horizontal mobility on defense.

With Van Vleet and Brooks' presence on the perimeter, Sengun can more comfortably play a drop type of defense, knowing that the attacking player will likely have less room to maneuver.

Although he is not an elite defender yet, Sengun still makes a good impact on the defensive end.

The Rockets have the best defensive rating in the entire league with 106.8 points allowed per 100 possessions, which is significantly better than last season.

However, Sengun is carving out an increasingly central role on offense.

His creativity makes him an extremely difficult player for opposing defenses to control. With his passing vision, Sengun can find any teammate in any corner of the court. A quality that makes him extremely similar to Jokic in the offensive half of the court.

Add to this his qualities in the low post and his ability to attack off the dribble, and we have a truly complete package at the offensive level.

"I think his basketball IQ is even higher than you think; he really understands the game," Udoka said about Sengun in a recent interview.

"And for a guy of his age, being so young, he's able to do so many things that resemble Jokic's style," he added.

And it is along the lines of the Nuggets and Nikola Jokic that the Rockets are trying to recreate their offensive system, using Sengun as the main focal point in the same way that Jokic is the heart of the Nuggets' offense.

Sure, the Turkish player is not yet at Jokic's level, but in his third year in the league, his figures are extremely similar to what Jokic had in his third year in the NBA, and their growth path has several aspects in common.

This season, Sengun finds an almost automated understanding with VanVleet. The former Toronto Raptors point guard seems the perfect partner to complement the Turkish center's game.

The two look for and find each other with great frequency in pick-and-roll situations, and their two-man game is becoming the foundation of the Rockets' offense.

After a recent win against the Nuggets, Jokic once again emphasized Sengun's qualities and how important it is that the Rockets are now using him more on offense.

"I think it's a good thing that they're playing more through Sengun now," Jokic stated after the Nuggets suffered a loss against the Rockets. "I think that's going to benefit the whole organization. He's a guy who's not selfish, he wants to play for the team, he's always willing to pass the ball, and that's beneficial to the team."

Although the season has been underway for just under a month, and the Rockets still have several things to fix, the enormous difficulties of the past two seasons already seem like a distant memory.

The Texas franchise seems to have put the right pieces in place around what has already become the real star of the team, Alperen Sengun.

The Turkish player still has a long way to go before becoming an NBA star, but the signs of increasingly exponential growth are evident.

If Sengun maintains this level, it will be difficult for Houston not to continue planning around him for the future of the franchise.

What Jabari Smith Jr. said in the summer was absolutely true: the Rockets are entering a new phase, and they are now Alperen Sengun's team.

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