Eason was kind of sucky - I'm going to give him a pass because he hasn't played a real game in nearly a year, but this was the type of scrapping game (charlotte had no big men) where he's supposed to shine. Very disappointing given how bad Smith was.
You keep saying its a weak draft but lots of players in the draft have outperformed Reed Sheppard so far. It may be Reed is just a weak pick in the draft. The only time your claim is true is if Reed is the 3rd best rookie in this draft and so far he is not. He was overhyped because people put too much stock in college performance without taking into account he is 6'1.75 with trex arms. You got all these Reed truthers disrespecting the talent level in the NBA and now we are seeing the sad truth that majority of shorties in the NBA are just role players. Reed was drafted to be a dead eye shooter aka Cocaine Curry. Till he becomes a reliable 3 pt shooter he will always be a disappointment no matter how other people try to spin it. Thats the no 1 thing people said when saying he should be the pick. On the plus side Reed is only 19 and he can still grow a couple inches like Sengun or Green. He also has good defensive instincts, high bball IQ so if his shot comes around ajd he grows a couple inches he can still be the top pick on this draft as the NBA GMs have speculated. As such although I am disappointed I am not writing him off yet he can still pan out.
Stephon Castle, Knecht, Edey if we consider just Sl and preseason there are so many others Ka'lel Ware, Risacher, Cody Williams etc Its just these guys laid an egg in their first game similar to Sheppard.
It's been one real game for each of them. Tiniest sample size. Castle had 8 points on 3-7 shooting. Edey fouled out in 15 minutes, 5 pts, 5 rebs, 0 asts/stls/blks, 1-5 ft Knecht 5 pts, 1 reb, 2 asts I won't really even start judging Reed until deep into the second season. Look at the career trajectories of Mark Price, Stockton, Nash. Patience.
All those 3 are better than Sheppard's 4/2/3 with 3 tos, 0% from 3 and 40% FG in 20 mins. When I say so far I mean SL, Preseason and that 1 game. Sure its a tiny sample size, but its all we have RN. 4 games SL+4 games preseason+1 real game. Thats small but not insignificant either. Outside of the first SL game RS has never had a good game so its 1/9 already. As I said I can be both disappointed and still think he may pan out in the future. I dont expect "patience" after everybody glazed him out predraft. If we expected a multi year investment why didnt we get Stephon Castle instead?
Not many but enough to be concerned about his current trend of play. I've always thought of this as a weak draft. Now we're about to find out the hard way that we should have drafted better.
I don't think his size or his arm length were an issue so far. His defense has been just fine, even good if you count his steals. For him it is about getting used and comfortable to the NBA (as it is for most rookies) and finding his shot. You are right, drafting Reed was all about drafting a shooter - all his passing, steals etc. would just be the bonus. If he doesn't turn into a 38% shooter from three he will most probably be a disappointment. Actually Jabari was similar. You knew you were getting a 3&D guy. The possibility of him turning into a star that carries a team was always slim, you were hoping for that elite role player every team needs (a guy that can defend every position and is automatic from three, so you can never give him space, because he can also shoot over everybody). Both players were elite shooters in college with no reason to think, they can't reproduce it with the pros (because of their shooting form and the kind of threes they took and made). So far this has not been the case with Jabari - hopefully he can change that this year. We don't know yet about Reed, but it has been 1 game in which he took 1 shot from three point range (which even almost went in). I'd say it is far too early to say anything about his ability to hit the 3 in the NBA.
I think reed and jabari need to team up and help each other by being the others support and motivator.
Just needs to get stronger and tighten that handle. He's not NBA-ready for the PG position right now nor can he guard NBA-sized SG's. However that's pretty standard stuff for an elite prospect his age/experience. Could have said the same about Steph Curry. Can be useful to us this season and develop fast off the bench. Give the kid at least a month to get acclimated to new league, new team, new system. I think he could compete for starting PG next season but for now is a potential super sub on the team.
His no 1 goal should be regaining that 3 pt touch. With Alpi and Green being threats he has so much open looks he needs to capitalize on.
Bullshit. Why are you trying to rewrite history? It's not me who called it a weak draft, it's all of the draft experts. You can't blame other people for making up nonsense in your mind and believing it to be true.
Unless this board just wants to go full on 100% troll threads on the first page - and we were damn close all Summer to be fair - this should stop. But hey, I believe Alpi isn't a 12 mpg backup third tier big so maybe I just don't see eye to eye w/ the boards leadership. I was pretty disappointed in what I saw from Reed. I feared it. I didn't expect it, but I feared it. He needs to be better on defense on everything other than timing passing lanes and he just can't get any separation from his man on offense. It's going to take a year to figure that out. I think he will but healthy skepticism is valid.
I usually agree w/ about 90% of what you write but going to call out a few things here. Steph was a 4 year player at Davidson. Steph put up the numbers he did while being the entire focus of the other team's game-plan and defense. Subjectivity aside here's Steph's rookie year: 18/6/5/2 stocks on 46%/44%/89%. I'd give Reed a near 0% chance of pulling that off on a 32 win team like Curry. On a 15 win team he could probably get the counting stats but nothing approaching Curry's efficiency. Hence, no, suggesting you can level the same criticism at Reed as you could at Curry is a hard disagree for me. Moreover, there aren't many 19 year old elite prospects w/ his age/experience....at his size. That's a huge component you ommitted. Trea is probably the closest recent comp. Trea came in w/ exponentially better handles and the ability to create space and playmake which are tiers above Reed (so far). I could write another page but it's been one game so that's a bit silly. What I can't unsee is Reed's lack of separation on offense. For a tiny guard that has to be your calling card and he's just not there yet. He shouldn't have to figure it out using important rotation minutes so Ime's going to have to budge on that. Reed's too good a shooter not to find his role and make it work but I have some specific concerns beyond that.
Davidson didn't play anywhere near the level of competition Kentucky did and Steph didn't have his coach sabotaging the team like Reed did. Steph as a freshman at Davidson played a grand total of 2 ranked teams.... and they lost both games. Sheppard as a freshman at Kentucky faced 7 ranked teams and only lost 3 of them. Steph had free reign to do whatever he wanted with unlimited minutes, Kentucky had the 2 best players on the team coming off the bench behind scrubs and forced into support roles due to the coach wanting to keep his word more than he wanted to win. Put Sheppard on a mid major like Davidson was back then and his stats would have been inflated quite a bit.
Because this team can't shoot and Castle can't shoot. He's better than Reed at PoA defense....and that's it. He's worse at literally everything else. Let's see what Alex Sarr did in his opening night as a starter. 2 pts in 22 minutes (good for .09 pts per minute) 0/5 from 3, 5 rebounds and an assist. Maybe someone can jog my memory but one of the Reed detractors was banging his drum in here during the pre-season about how much better Sarr was in the pre-season than Reed. The fact that he played as much as he did in the opener means that he's the future at that position. Or the Rockets see him as that anyway. He did fine. It'll take him a minute to adjust but he will. So far him, Amen, Sengun and oddly enough Jalen look like they're going to be fine.
