Hell no he’s not ready. It’s laughable to think he’s capable of starting at PG for a championship team.
He’s nowhere near ready (a lot of that isn’t on him). We’re cooked as far as title contention goes (long shot anyway). Bottom half playoff team as currently constructed.
I think Reed Sheppard is more capable in explaining X and O better than anyone on the Team including the Coaches. Ime Udoka can't run a offense. Give it Alperen Sengun for the last second shot has hurt the team. Alperen Sengun with a Airball against the 76ers is terrible basketball.
Why? Because he’s white is your thinking. He wasn’t even the main initiator in college. Basically you are saying he has some god endowed brain power that negates decades of experience of every vet. Idiotic.
Took me a while when I first joined to realise it was a different forum. For a little while I just thought you all liked dressing up as VERY political elves.
In the NBA, the better team defenses offer help, forces opponents to do certain things, prevent them from doing other things and generally puts guys in roles where they can succeed. It's not 5 individual matchups. There's a stat which the NBA publishes that shows the shooting percentage when a particular player guards a shooter and compares that to the what that shooter normally averages on the same shots. They call the actual % - the average % stat the "Diff%". For example, let's say that I only guarded guys on corner jumpers ( I'm a specialist!). Normally, those same players would average 35% on those same corner jumpers, but when I'm guarding them they average 37%. That makes my Diff% a +2. Guys shoot 2% better on comparable shots than they normally do on the shots where I'm guarding them. If you look at the Diff% for the Rockets rotational players ( I'm including Sheppard), most everyone is around the range of one percentage point of holding their man to their average percentage ( +1 to -1). Obviously, those numbers need context as holding SGA to within 1% of his avg fg% is a much bigger accomplishment than holding a defensive specialist who doesn't really score to within 1% of his average. Amen is the outlier he guards the best offensive player every game and his diff% is -5.4. His opponents usually shoot 46.2% on the shots that he guarded but he's holding them to 40.7%. Tari Eason is also very good at -3.3 in Diff% Rest of the guys are near that +1 to -1 range. Sengun -1.2, Brooks -0.1, FVV +0.1, Jalen Green +1.1, Jabari + 1.0, Adams -0.7, Sheppard +1.2 Looking at a the new guys who are coming in: DFS was -1.5% with the Lakers. The Lakers aren't as good of a defensive team as Houston and you can tell from their guards numbers. Reeves +3.3, D. Russel + 3.2, Knecht +3.1 Durant was a -5.7%. Surprising number. I just looked at who he guarded the most last season and while it's not an elite offensive group he did have good numbers against Siakam and K. Leonard. He also held Jabari to 28.2% FG% and 0% 3pt% on shots that he guarded. Booker was +3.1, Grayson Allen +1.7, Beal +1.5, Bol Bol + 1.2 Okoro was a -3.3, another good number. Mobley -3.1, Garland +1.2, Mitchell -1.9, Strus +2.7, J. Allen -2.0 Bottom line is that Sheppard has a really small sample size last year. If you look at his matchups stats ( stats from the times his opponent possessed the ball), the most he guarded anyone last year was 4:56 total minutes guarding Austin Reeves. BTW he did a good job. Reeves only got up two shots and missed them both, had 2 assists and 4 turnovers while guarded by Sheppard. If you look at Sheppard's matchups, he didn't really get lit up by anyone. The interesting thing is that everyone that he guarded usually got a low number of shots. I'm guessing that Udoka will employ the same strategy and cross match a bunch with Amen, Tari and DFS. The rest of the guys (including Sheppard) will likely land somewhere in that +1 to -1 range.
Really wish Ime had trusted Reed as the next guy up when Fred went down last year for that 17 game stretch. Obviously he's primarily concerned with wins and losses, but we ended up only going 8-9 during that stretch anyway. In hindsight, might as well have let Reed play through some growing pains, but now we get to see that to start this season instead. Not ideal.
I see only (other than Rox) the Lakers and Clippers, maybe Timberwolves (lost bench depth but starters intact) vying for that 3rd and 4th Seed .....they got their own geriatric problems. I think the Warriors would have more serious injury issues like every year. Memphis is up and down. Do I believe in the Spurs, Portland, Dallas .....not yet. Blazers play well in the regular season, intrigued me.
He has the intelligence but he did not strike me as explosive enough or just juicy enough in his better performances.
Intelligence beats physical explosiveness. Of course it's always preferable to have both. And you need certain level of physical competence to be competitive in the NBA, But if I had to choose between a guy with high intelligence and mediocre physical gifts and a guy with great explosiveness and mediocre intelligence, I'd choose the former. We had two guys, Green and Whitmore, who had great explosiveness. Now they are both gone because they don't have the intelligence to utilize their physical gifts.
