As expected he is clearly the weakest chain on the line up. I assume by DFS back his role will be less during the crunch time.He needs time but i suspect this team is the right place for it.
I'm fine with people saying Castle is a better NBA player right now, which he clearly is. It's also fine to say he was excellent today and better than Reed. The most inexcusable and clear hater s**t I see is people acting like Reed hurt the team in a game where the entire starting unit was significantly in the negative and he was a team high +8 with efficient offensive numbers. Even in a game he was inarguably a net positive they still find a way to crow about how he sucks and will always suck.
For sure, the term suck sounded dead absolute......Castle is a typical Spurs player, they have an absolute dead on identity since the Admiral and Duncan...... the best execution, now just with physical freaks. There is not much identity going on after the KD trade, is it KD's team, is it Sengün's team, is it Amen's team, nobody knows.....while it is Udoka's playground for sure.
Seriously - I was wondering the same. It really seems like there are MANY posters here who pay absolutely no attention to the defensive side of the ball. I looked it up - the Rockets got the score down to 3 with 3:48 left in the game. The Spurs took a timeout came back and clearly the game plan was "attack Reed". He was then directly involved in ten of the Spurs next 12 points and more importantly - no defensive stops. - 4:31 - Champagnie hits a three because Reed fell asleep letting Castle sneak past him - Durant slid off his man to help Reed, Castle immediately whips the ball to Champagnie who is already in his shot motion before Reed even realizes where the ball was(never even recovered to him!!). - 3:54 - Reed loses the same man in the exact same spot on the very next play - Castle gets a dunk. - 3:18 - Alpi plays good defense on Wemby but Reed doesnt box out Castle who gets the rebound and hits a wide open Champagnie for an open three. -- 2:54 - more good defense on Wemby only to be undone by a missed boxout although this time it was the fault of Okoge. No Reed issues on this possession - 2:17 - it appears Reed is supposed to double on Wemby but he slowly jogs toward him then spends a moment trying to find his man again then tries to double - just a very weird, unaggressive move and Wemby swishes the shot over Amen with the very passive help. At this point the Rockets are down by 8 with just under 2 minutes - Reed misses a fairly open three, and mercifully is pulled from the game. He finishes the quarter 2-4 from three for 6 points, one assist for a dunk, and 1 foul. I didn't chart the whole quarter but he was responsible for 8 points on our team and was directly responsible for 10 Spurs points after Houston had got the game down to three. If I charted the whole quarter I would imagine there were several more "Reed's bad" plays but the Spurs scored more in the disastrous nearly 3 minute span than Reed contributed all quarter. Not trying to nitpick Reed - I think he played fairly well offensively but it's important to remember that the big threes only mean something if he isn't immediately givings those shots back up by bad defense guarding his man.
He played a great game up until the clutch time. Considering all the variables, I'm not gonna freak out on his horrific defensive performance in the late game. Going to get better with more PT. We have had starters messing up their rotations on man and zone defense today.
Without Reed, the Rockets lose by 20+ If you watched the game and don't realize that he was one of the only Rockets that played well, you should just give up on attempting to watch basketball.
Yeah, just not seeing what you are, but I'm not wearing beer goggles. The assists were because his teammates were red hot. He would probably have his normal 5 assists or so. 5 for 12 and 5 turnovers isn't a good game. The assists were, and that's about all. He did have a couple plays down the stretch, but so did a lot of guys. Rockets lost because the spurs kept getting wide open looks from 3 and hit them (not 0 for 4 Castle).
Wow, man, you've got to stop. You don't give a **** about Reed but you post so much in this thread. And you keep giving a lot of **** about a guy on the Spurs. If you don't care about Reed, don't ever click into this thread.
Why do you think the Rockets lost last night? Like...the main reason? Reed came in *twice* and helped give the Rockets the lead. You want to nitpick some defensive end game possessions? Fine. But he was *far* from the reason the Rockets lost this game and anyone coming into this thread to even insinuate it is disingenuous at best. Even Stan at some point in the broadcast said you could argue he was the Rockets best player up to that point. Which pretty much sums up *why* we lost that game.
They actually switched back to man-to-man defense in the closing minutes but still gave up three straight offensive rebounds, IIRC. The Rockets have been a strong defensive and offensive rebounding team overall, so I’m not going to be too hard on them, but it’s frustrating to see NBA players forget one of the first fundamentals everyone learns: find a body and box out. I went back and rewatched the final five minutes, and all of these plays were in man-to-man defense: 3:55 – Castle walked in for an easy layup. Reed was in no man’s land; he neither picked up Castle nor committed to doubling Wemby. 3:19 – Castle was under the rim with Reed right there but still grabbed the offensive rebound and kicked it out for a made three. Reed simply failed to box him out. 2:58 – Castle was at the elbow with Amen guarding him. He basically walked in uncontested for the offensive rebound put back. Amen just stood and watched instead of putting a body on him. 2:20 – Wemby hit a fadeaway jumper, but again, Castle slipped right between Sengun and KD to position himself for another potential rebound. Neither noticed him or boxed him out until he was right under the rim. 0:52 – Champagnie crashed in from the top of the key and grabbed the offensive rebound. Tari never boxed him out.
I truly don't understand the Reed hate at all. By far our best player. Facilitated, didn't turn the ball over and made shots. Did everything nobody else was doing....
I cant remember one of our draft picks getting hate watched this hard this early. Jalen had it coming at the end and even the Jabari stuff I could understand in his 3rd year. But holy **** some of these Reed haters are wild. Its like they switched from defending Jalen to just hating Reed.
Team expectations are championship level. It appears they are running a zone that doesn't work when Reed plays. They are upset at the zone and hence Reed. Thats what it truly is.
Pretty stupid given that it was Reed's minutes that got the team back in the game twice and the minutes without him that pissed the game away. But narratives are narratives.
Defense/boxing out are huge, but the clear progress on the offensive end is the story. It bodes well for us. He's a work in progress. But, starting to show. It's a glimpse...like the OKC game.
I'm not sure if all the Reed haters are Jalen fans. More like Castle fans. I know many Jalen haters were Mobley fans. They just hate the fact that the Rockets chose one guy over the other and so they hate that one guy. The most irrational to me are those Paolo fans that hate Jabari. We didn't even have a chance to pick Paolo. They might as well hate Amen because we didn't pick Wemby.
I don't hate Reed Sheppard. I just think we'll need an upgrade after December 15th. Good teams will pressure the ball against us like the Spurs did last night and will punish us as we don't have a competent primary ball handler. Reed's 3-point shooting is a huge weapon and I'm really relieved that he's shooting it this well. That's super encouraging. He's still developing his playmaking skills though and doesn't always make the best decisions when he has the ball. That aspect still needs some work. The defense is bad and he's clearly the worst defensive player in our rotation. Hopefully that improves some with experience. He'll never be a good defender though. We need a competent NBA starting point guard on the roster and will need to acquire that guy after December 15th. I have been among the Reed criticisers but I have some hope that his playmaking skills will improve and that his defense will become less bad with experience. The 3-point shooting is such a weapon that it can balance his weaknesses out. I just don't want Reed Sheppard in the closing lineup in the playoffs this year. Maybe he'll be ready for that next season.
