Bruce Thornton’s first NBA contract is now in the books, and Houston wasted no time locking in the second-rounder it targeted on draft night.
The Rockets announced today that Thornton has signed with the team and will join Houston’s Summer League group in Las Vegas. Michael Scotto of HoopsHype reported that the deal is worth roughly $9.3MM over four years, with only the first season fully guaranteed. Because Houston used the second-round pick exception, the final year of the contract, 2029/30, is a team option.
Thornton arrives after a strong senior season at Ohio State, where he averaged 19.9 points, 5.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.1 steals in 36.5 minutes per game in 2025/26. The 6’2″ guard shot .554/.400/.829 that year and finished his college career with an assist-to-turnover ratio of around 3:1.
His resume at Ohio State kept growing year after year. Thornton made the All-Big Ten second team in 2025 and 2026 after earning third-team honors in 2024, and he left the program as its all-time leading scorer with 2,164 points. The Rockets also noted in their press release that he was the first D-I player to post at least 2,000 career points and 500 assists with fewer than 200 turnovers since the NCAA began tracking turnovers in 1992.
Houston had to maneuver to get him. The Rockets didn’t own the No. 31 pick, but they worked out a trade with the Knicks before the second round began to move up from No. 39 and select Thornton. In the deal, Houston slid from No. 53 to No. 55 - a pick it later traded - and sent New York a 2029 second-rounder.
With Thornton signed, the Rockets now have 10 players on standard contracts. That number is expected to rise to 13 once the reported deals with Tari Eason, Marcus Smart and Bogdan Bogdanovic become official.
In Other News...
Rafael Stone Has One Rockets Habit Fans Cant Keep Ignoring
Rafael Stone has built a reputation in Houston for being aggressive when it comes to the margins of roster building, and that includes a habit Rockets fans have noticed for a while now: second-round picks rarely seem to stay in his pocket for long. The front office has had real success finding value in the middle of the first round, with Tari Eason and Alperen Sengun standing out as the kind of selections that help shape a teams future, but the second round has not produced nearly the same kind of payoff.
The latest move only sharpened the conversation, because it fit a pattern Stone has followed before, using that part of the draft as currency in deals that clear roster space or help with bigger cap-picture goals. He has earned credit for contract work and other smart parts of his tenure, but until Houston turns one of those second-round swings into a real contributor, the questions around that habit are not going away anytime soon. [Read more 🡒]