Agree, great defensive review of Reed's adjustments by @Will Reed's ball handling and decision-making are also improving, and I equate that to more opportunities for him. He still needs to get better, but these areas are also moving in the right direction (like his defense and shooting). I believe Reed is our PG for the present and future, and the more experience he gets the sooner everyone else will realize he's the solution (and not some too be named vet).
This is why I say last year was wasted, we were not a championship contender, we should have been developing REED all year long. Oh well, better late than never. DD
The Rockets have consistently outperformed objective win projections every year that Ime has coached the team, as young players on the Rockets have collectively exceeded average development by a wide margin. FVV and Brooks are not why the Rockets went from 41 wins to 52 wins.
Reed is currently ahead of schedule as far as his play is concerned. If he continues on this route he will exceed all expectations. For now he is perfect as a 6th man.
I think if FVV didn't get hurt Reed would be barely playing. Somewhat meaningless - I mean whose projections? What would it have been with Adelman's son? I mean you can't really cite that, there is no data to compare it against. DD
Report from the Wizards game: Obviously, Reed is hitting his shots. Again, I’ll set that aside and focus on the stuff he needs to improve so Ime will give him more minutes. In the offense, he’s making more moves to the basket. Some are unsuccessful, some lead to turnovers. But it’s pretty clear that he’s learning where he can get off a shot, a layup, or a dime against NBA-sized defenders. There may be nights when we lose and he gets the blame. But over the course of the season, if we stick with him and encourage him, I think it’ll pay off as he finds his spots. From the arc, we can see him trying out moves with the ball to shake his defender and get open 3’s. He failed the first time tonight but tried again later and nailed it. Then he got hot from there. Again, we’re seeing the development of a weapon that will serve us well down the line. After Reed hit a big 3 about halfway through the fourth, the Wizards focused more on him. Carrington, playing between Sengun and Reed, intercepted the pass from Sengun. Carrington had his back to Reed and didn’t even have to look at him, because Reed didn’t budge. The solution is obvious: Reed needs to be moving around the arc, more like Curry. Defensively, in his first run in this game, he regressed a bit from the Bucks game. He still has some bad old habits: a rash crosscourt pass that got picked off, a couple of out-of-position, off-balance swipes at guys driving. But he settled down as the game went on. His steal of Cam’s entry pass early in the 2nd was the right kind: getting position so all he had to do was reach to the anticipated spot and take the ball. I can’t stress this enough: When Reed defends with his feet, his hands can do the rest. He obviously loves the element of surprise, coming from behind for a block or steal. And that looks great in the highlights. But over the course of a game, that’s not winning basketball. He has to focus on the boring stuff, the footwork and positioning. He’ll actually create more turnovers this way. The other area where he improved over the course of the game was taking away space. In the 2nd quarter, McCollum got some runway and blew by him. But in the 4th, Reed was much better about stepping up on ball handlers to cut off the runway. On one play he saw a screen coming, stepped forward, and backed up sideways in front of the screener to cut off the curl, a la Okogie. It was beautiful. If this kid can pick up half of Okogie’s defensive acumen, even at his size, that’ll get him a lot more PT. A few lapses late in the third and early in the fourth. Out of position, a dumb ugly swipe foul, then ball-watching as his man sneaked away, and he neglected to box out and we gave up a layup. Reed seems to be one of those guys who really wants the ball, even as a defender, and that sometimes makes him inattentive to his man. Late in the 4th, another good sign: He fought over a screen to get position and force a jump ball. He needs to do this a lot more. But it’s a start. One more thing: On some possessions, it looks like he’s taking more leadership in the defense. E.g. on one play, he redirected KD. When you’re the youngest player out there and the worst defender, it must feel weird to get bossy. But Reed’s deficiencies are largely physical, not mental. He has good court vision and good judgment. And if you’re gonna play PG, these are some of the responsibilities you have to take on.
His release is so quick. I really don't think I know of another player that's so quick to get their shot up outside of Steph Curry. I feel like we're seeing noticeable progress from game to game and that's really exciting. Granted, this was the Wizards.
Thanks for doing this. Hugely valuable and brings me back to the best days of CF, where posters would put up substantive stuff like this regularly. My general takeaway is that I am seeing Sheppard (1) take away space when guarding on the perimeter and (2) being physical and denying in pick situations. (His threes not even touching the rim is something to behold it is so pure). We saw zero of these elements early on, just a lot of blow bys, reaching, and flailing. Let’s be honest, a lot of us saw just another small, soft white dude who was at least supposed to know how to shoot. Now we are seeing he can physically do it and is mentally adjusting. If he can do it sometimes, then he can do it most or all of the time. The question becomes about his Bball IQ and work ethic. I have seen nothing to suggest he lacks either. The fact that Ime was willing to let him learn from mistakes and grow into the role tells me that Sheppard has shown Bball IQ, work ethic and flashed these skills in practice. Similarly, the way other players react to him indicates they respect him. In other words, if he were trash in practice or didn’t work hard, I think we would have seen some signs of frustration with Sheppard when he was total garbage on the court early on. I am stunned at how suddenly the light switch came on.
I would like to see Sengun and KD look for Sheppard more when their gravity commands so much attention. Run plays where Sheppard gets picks off ball to catch and shoot. Run enough of those and you can build sets where Sheppard is curling off picks, but the ball actually goes to Tari for 3 or Jabari for 3 or middie. Run these sets against bad teams. We don’t need to run sengun or KD iso. In other words, when the playoffs come, we need to be more multiple than KD and Sengun iso/PNR. Let’s be impossible to defend, like the Warriors were. We have not had this breadth of shooting and offensive weaponry since Hakeem and Clyde roamed the halls.
Wizards or not, any team that cheats too much with their help defense is gonna get burned by Sheppard. At some point this season, we may see teams just stick a defender on him with orders not to rotate off because he needs so little space to launch. He's also got great range, which further complicates switch everything defenses.
Betting lines, every objective statistical model... all had the Rockets winning fewer than 52 games last year. I don't think I heard one preseason prediction by any media member that had the Rockets at 52 wins. The main difference between the 23-24 and 24-25 Rockets was internal improvement. 9 wins is a huge amount of internal improvement without any modeling or having to cite anything except what happened during games. Considering FVV had a down year last season, the internal improvement was likely worth more than 9 wins. 9 wins worth of internal development is huge. Considering your view of FVV, I have to assume you think Ime got at least 16 wins of internal improvement from the young players between last season and the season before. So yes, there is a massive amount of data that suggests Ime is incredible at developing young players. Look at Reed this year. He looks like he's getting better every week. Look at Sengun/Smith under Silas. Watch game tape of Amen before February 2024. Having a coach that forces players to earn minutes forces players to develop if they want minutes.
We will know Reed is really getting comfortable and making a large impact when he has a poor shooting night and still makes a really positive impact on the floor. The criticism of his defense has always been over blown. He has issues at times ball watching or reaching, but that is unfortunately common in the NBA. When he moves his feet and is confident, he can be disruptive. He has gotten stronger, but he needs to continue improving the strength of his core. He will never be a straight man to man shut down defender like Castle or Thompson, but he can look to Chris Paul as an example of his upside on the defensive side. Right now he is a shooter that can get out some in transition and can pull up on both assisted and unassisted shots. In college he had started isolating guys and taking and making difficult shots at the end of halves and with the game on the line. We will have to see if he reaches that level at the NBA. The other question with him is if he will be able to increase his shot attempts and retain his same percentages. If he can do that, he has a chance to be a high level scorer.
