HOUSTON — In a league that can turn a player into a trendline overnight, Alperen Şengün has been doing something rarer: turning a franchise into a style.

The Houston Rockets — young, increasingly loud, and suddenly difficult to move off their spots — have found a gravitational center in a 23-year-old from Türkiye whose game looks like it belongs to a different era, until it doesn’t. Şengün plays with the old-world calm of a post player who’s seen every trick, and the modern urgency of a hub who must read help defenders the way quarterbacks read safeties.

In recent weeks, the numbers have announced what Rockets fans have been feeling: when Houston needs order, it runs through Şengün. Against the Los Angeles Clippers, he delivered a late-game performance that felt less like a “good night” than a statement of responsibility — scoring, rebounding, creating, and stealing possessions at the margins where tight games are won. Reuters A few days earlier, he helped transform a slow start against Sacramento into a decisive win, a reminder that the Rockets’ most reliable adjustment is often simply: give him the ball, and let the geometry change.