New Orleans Pelicans<\/a> forward Trey Murphy III, Smith spoke on a variety of topics related to his own personal growth and that of players around him in Houston.<\/p>\nPerhaps his strongest endorsement was for 23-year-old big man Alperen Sengun, who earned his first All-Star berth last season. When asked about the Turkish center\u2019s growth and what makes him able to control games at such a young age, Smith said:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s how much better he\u2019s gotten. He\u2019s so skilled. I\u2019ve seen him since his second year, and I\u2019ve seen him now through his fourth. He\u2019s gotten more athletic, and he\u2019s gotten stronger. His physical play, and what he imposes to other people… it wasn\u2019t like that two years ago. He wasn\u2019t just burying people.<\/p>\n
If you (opposing defense) get a switch, you\u2019re dead. You\u2019ve got to double, and some teams don\u2019t let him play one-on-one in the post. You can\u2019t. He\u2019s just gotten so much better at reading the game… and making a simple play. People judge him so strongly and forget that he\u2019s, like, 22 years old (Sengun\u2019s age last season). The weight he has on his shoulders as being one of our best players, it\u2019s not easy. He\u2019s special, for real.<\/p>\n
The complete conversation can be viewed and listened to below.<\/p>\n
More: Rockets star Alperen Sengun to play for Turkey in FIBA EuroBasket 2025<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe\u2019s just gotten so much better at reading the gane and making the simple play,\u201d Jabari Smith Jr.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[59,1495,1307,72,7,74,292,194,4066,2138,6175,2497,106,71,86,12178,70,85,6,239,470,67,674,61,134,675,3569,132,211,876,6176,66,83,8831,6514,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-208344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-affiliate","9":"tag-alperen","10":"tag-alperen-sengun","11":"tag-arts","12":"tag-basketball","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-houston","15":"tag-houston-rockets","16":"tag-houstonrockets","17":"tag-iii","18":"tag-jabari","19":"tag-jabari-smith-jr","20":"tag-jr","21":"tag-local","22":"tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","23":"tag-murphy","24":"tag-national","25":"tag-national-sports","26":"tag-nba","27":"tag-new","28":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-orleans","31":"tag-overall","32":"tag-overall-positive","33":"tag-pelicans","34":"tag-podcasts","35":"tag-positive","36":"tag-rockets","37":"tag-sengun","38":"tag-smith","39":"tag-sports","40":"tag-sports-news","41":"tag-trey","42":"tag-trey-murphy-iii","43":"tag-u0026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114957051822468736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}