The Portland Trail Blazers must decide whether to extend former No. 3 overall pick Scoot Henderson. He's currently eligible for a rookie-scale extension leading up to the start of the upcoming 2026-27 season.
One player in that 2023 draft class who just received an extension was Amen Thompson, selected one pick later by the Houston Rockets. Thompson agreed to a five-year, $208 million extension that includes a 10 percent trade kicker, ESPN's Shams Charania reported Thursday.
As NBA salary cap analyst Yossi Gozlan points out on X, this is a "significant paradigm shift for a player of his caliber to get a rookie extension below the max."
Salary projections for Amen Thompson's five-year, $208 million deal.
— Yossi Gozlan (@YossiGozlan) September 3, 2026
Five-year max = $250 million at 25 percent of the cap.
The Rockets secure him at 22 percent of the cap.
Significant paradigm shift for a player of his caliber to get a rookie extension below the max. pic.twitter.com/TujwhRWRPs
Thompson could've signed a five-year max for $250 million at 25 percent of the cap, yet seemingly took a slight pay cut to land at 22 percent of Houston's cap on what is still an extremely lucrative $208 million deal.
Amen Thompson's extension latest reminder of Portland's draft blunder
The fact that Gozlan considers that figure a "significant paradigm shift" tells you everything you need to know about the talent Portland missed out on in the draft.
The Blazers' decision to pass on Thompson in favor of Henderson immediately was off to a bad start, with rookie seasons that couldn't have gone in further opposite directions.
To his credit, Henderson has quietly recovered from a historically bad rookie campaign to actually redefine himself as a role player in Portland's backcourt.
And to be fair to the Blazers front office, the consensus at the time was that Henderson was in that second tier of prospects with Brandon Miller, meaning the majority of analysts had them simply selecting whoever was left after the Charlotte Hornets picked at No. 2.
In retrospect that couldn't have been further from the case; Amen's massive extension with Houston unfortunately serves as the latest reminder of the franchise-altering talent Portland missed out on.
GM Joe Cronin has done a solid job overall of navigating this draft blunder, unconventionally landing building blocks via trades for Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara instead. But can you picture what this young Blazers core would look like with Thompson in the mix?
Ignoring the butterfly effect and assuming all things equal, this Blazers roster with Thompson instead of Henderson would likely be in that second tier of Western Conference teams, including the Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets. Floor spacing would be even more of an issue, but opposing teams would also have scoring issues of their own to worry about, going up against what would arguably be the best defensive team in the league at that point.
Portland sacrificed some of that defensive identity this offseason in their surprising trade for Ja Morant, a move that likely never would've happened had they just drafted Amen Thompson instead of Scoot Henderson.
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