Kendrick Perkins Makes Bold Claim About Victor Wembanyama
Oct 14, 2025
It’s hard for anyone to measure up to Victor Wembanyama, the incredible physical specimen who is widely considered to be the NBA’s future. But, for one hoops analyst, there’s at least one player in the league who can figuratively (but certainly not literally) measure up to Wembanyama.
Appearing on ESPN’s “NBA Today” last week, Kendrick Perkins made a bold claim about a certain Houston Rockets guard who can possibly pose a challenge to Wembanyama down the line. According to Perkins, this guard will have an even bigger impact on his team this season.
“They’re going to get stops, and it’s gonna be led by their best defender in Amen Thompson, who I believe is going to challenge Victor Wembanyama in the next few years as the best two-way player in the game,” Perkins said.
While Thompson isn’t frequently compared to the Spurs’ franchise player, Perkins might be onto something in his bold assertion. Last season, Thompson helped dictate the tone defensively for a Rockets team that finished with 52 wins and clinched the second seed in the Western Conference.
Advanced statistics show how impactful Thompson was in the Rockets’ surge last season. In both the regular season and the playoffs, Thompson was second on the team in defensive win shares, a measure of a player’s contributions to team success via the defensive end.
Small wonder, then, that the 22-year-old was named to the All-Defensive First Team—something that Wembanyama wasn’t able to accomplish in 2024–25. On top of this, Thompson was tied for third on the Rockets’ lineup in scoring (14.1 ppg) and came in second in rebounds (8.2 rpg). Amazingly, Thompson outperformed center Alperen Şengün in the blocks department, leading the Rockets with 1.3 rejections per game.
Of course, “two-way” means dominance on both offense and defense. While it remains to be seen whether Thompson can flourish into a 20-points-a-night scorer, there’s no doubt that he’s an impressive all-around package who can control games on both ends of the floor.
Could Thompson prove Perkins right and challenge Wembanyama’s claim to supremacy? No matter how this plays out, NBA fans would ultimately win as the two bright young stars put on a show for years to come.
