Sunday night's game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets, one of the best of the regular season, hit maximal tension when Dillon Brooks began to tear a rebound out of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's hands. The scrap escalated until both parties started to laugh—a wholesome incident between Team Canada pals. On most teams, Brooks's defensive intensity would be an anomaly, and yet he might not even be the second-most aggressive defender on the Rockets' roster.
The Thunder are currently the best team in the West, but as they took their last possession of the game, down 113-115, with their key players guarded by Tari Eason and Amen Thompson, they looked strangely helpless. Thunder co-stars Jalen Williams and Gilgeous-Alexander set quick screens for each other to spring someone free to get the inbounds pass. Thompson and Eason switched the screen, and Eason's constant pressure meant that Gilgeous-Alexander settled for catching the inbounds pass near half-court. SGA is one of the shiftiest players in the NBA, content to iso against anyone, and it seemed for a moment that he had his man beat. But Eason marauded him every step of the way, and stuck a hand so squarely in front of the resulting fadeaway jumper that Gilgeous-Alexander barely got the shot off before landing on the ground—the ball clanged off the rim. The Rockets won from there, 119-116. If you need to protect a lead, throw Eason and Thompson in the closing lineup.
"Watch these two bench guys play defense" might not be the most compelling pitch on paper, but these are not ordinary bench guys, and they might not be bench guys for long. Houston's second-ranked defense is premised on the ability of each player to handle his assignment without much help, switching when necessary, and shutting down threes. The Rockets have excellent personnel for the job, but within that group, and within the NBA at large, the third-year Eason and second-year Thompson are outliers, long-armed and brawny fiends who seem to skitter laterally or backward faster than most players can dribble forward. They're roughly wing-sized, but happy to switch up or down: Eason is 6-foot-8 with a 7-foot-2 wingspan, and Thompson is 6-foot-7 with a 7-foot wingspan.
Watching these two gunk up a good offense is about as pleasurable as watching a good offense go off. Suddenly, even advancing the ball past half court becomes a hellacious mini-game. Eason and Thompson both enjoy stonewalling the other team's best wing, and can both switch onto a center and hold their own. They love to freelance, leaving their man behind to go smother a shot that seemed, according to a shooter's intuition of normal movement on a basketball court, like a perfectly clean look. They love to clog the passing lanes and, relatedly, inflict pain in transition.
While they share a lot of the same athletic gifts, if you had to contrast them, Eason might stand out for his darting hand speed and core strength that makes him eerily immovable, even when the opponent has better leverage. "I had a young Kawhi Leonard—[Eason is] the closest thing that reminds me of what Kawhi did back in the day," said Houston head coach Ime Udoka this past January, remembering his time as a San Antonio Spurs assistant. Meanwhile, Thompson might just be the fastest player in the league right now; his raw foot speed and hops are staggering. He doesn't yet have much polish as a shooter, but he does everything else there is to do on a basketball court.
Eason and Thompson are both spectacular defenders individually, and on the floor together they ratchet each other up, in a show of sadistic oneupmanship. Due to health, they didn't overlap much last season. Eason said during the offseason that, as motivation, he'd sent Thompson some metrics about the best defenders in the league: "If these are the guys that they say are the best defenders, I know what we bring, and I know we're better than a lot of the guys they say are quote-unquote the best defenders in the NBA." So far, so good: Opposing teams shoot 41.7 percent from the field, including 32.2 percent from three, when both Eason and Thompson are on the floor. The defensive rating is an excellent 101.2, and the offensive rating 112.6. Eason in particular is currently posting some batshit numbers: 4.3 percent of possessions he guards end in him stealing the ball, and 4.3 percent of opposing two-point field goal attempts end in him blocking the shot, good for first and 14th in the league respectively, per Basketball Reference.
Unsurprisingly, these fellas also love to rebound. In a 111-103 win over the Clippers in November, Eason and Thompson put up twin double-doubles, combining for a total of 36 points, 21 rebounds, three assists, and three blocks. During an interview with Michael Pina of The Ringer, Udoka said that he views Eason's fierce offensive rebounding as "the first layer of your transition defense," as the constant threat that discourages opposing players from running out on the break the other way. It all makes for a confounding, incessantly physical experience that is likely to exhaust any opponent. Their excess energy also helps their less defensively gifted teammates. With wings this active, Alperen Sengun can settle into a less critical role; he's often stashed on non-centers so he can protect the rim from the weak side.
This bench duo could see increased minutes with a trade; the Rockets are reportedly interested in shuffling their roster but seem to have designated these two as their future, as both are off the trading block, according to ESPN's Brian Windhorst. Eason, who is still easing back from a season-ending leg surgery in March, averages 22.8 minutes a night. Thompson plays 26.7. Can this this kind of intensity can be scaled up to starter minutes? The fun is in finding out.
