He didn't have better upside, the Rockets just made a bad choice. I said it at the time. If you watched his highlughts, games and looked at his game log, that told you what type of player he was and its manifesting its self now. No defense, inconsistent shot, avg to below avg handle, inability to get to the rim or past his defender.....AM I MISSING ANYTHING? The Rockets fell for the hype, instead of doing their HOMEWORK. Thats clearly on Stone and Ime.
He's just not a good player. When they drafted him I was hoping for JJ Redick. He's barely Sam Mack. He's awful on both ends of the floor
He is fine, he is being used wrongly, and is learning how to adjust. chicken littles above are out of their minds blaming the 6th man’s struggles for the teams struggles. DD
He is learning to play PG, on a team that has no system to help. Gonna take some time and he is 21 years old. FFS the impatience here, and lack of context is staggeringly stupid. DD
doesn't explain the one thing he was good at in college and not being able to do recently; shoot the ball
I thought Ime was a little too early with yanks on Reed's PT in November and December. Lately, Reed has been bad. He's still getting some on ball reps. He's getting decent looks, but missing them. From what I can tell, the biggest difference is that any pressure, even light, and sometimes without, he's missing. The problem seems to be Reed's. He's not the only problem. The offense even with him on the bench has not been good since mid-November. Not always bad, but the sagging off of Amen and Okogie (and centers) has been a problem when the 2-3 shooters on the court aren't shooting lights out. Also, when the opponent puts the center on Amen, the center clogs up the paint, killing everything, but shooting (results vary depending on the skill of the center).
Ironically, thats the same thing they said about him in college, he wasn't being used correctly. Is it the coaches or the player?
In college the coach was immediately run out of town for gross incompetence and now coaches at Arkansas where they are in a 3 way tie for 4th in their conference. The next coach was Kevin McHale 2.0.... Starting to seem like coaching is a problem
Reed's gotta shoot better. I don't think the coaching is doing him any favors, but he's gotta shoot the ball better for sure. I do think that when he eventually goes to a new team that just plays him, he'll play much better though.
100%, there's no excuse for his poor shooting even if coaching isn't helping. If you're an NBA player, you have to own that.
Report from the Celtics game: I have some strong opinions about this game. Some of you will disagree. But I’m just gonna say what I see on the video. Defensively, this was an A game from Reed. The most caffeinated game I’ve seen from him in weeks. Boston threw a bunch of screen actions at him. He stepped up and cut off every one. Can’t give him an A+, since he got only one steal, but if his job was to stop leaking drives, he did it as well as I’ve seen. And he was on the bench for the first 8 minutes of the 3rd, when Boston blew the game open. Let’s talk about the missed 3s. The first three tries, he was given good screens, set his feet, followed through, and just plain missed. It looked like the first one was off the back rim, second one off the front, third one off the front too. That last one bothers me because it was right after Clint retrieved Reed’s miss and gave him another shot. A good shooter, when he’s recalibrating, should hit on the next attempt from a similar spot. But Reed again left it short. (His fourth attempt was another story. I’ll get to that later.) I’m a believer in Reed’s shooting. By that I mean his form is solid (it’s not like watching Jalen go hot or cold) and he has a good track record to back it up, so over time the shot should start falling again. Obviously the last several games have called that into question. But when Reed returned in the second half, the good fundamentals started to cash in. On his fifth try, he was given a good screen, stepped up and followed through again, and this time he got the calibration right. On the sixth, he didn’t need the screen, he just pulled up and hit it from well behind the line. The seventh was front rim. The eighth, a DHO from Amen, was another hit. So 3/8 for the night. Call me back when he’s had a couple of 5/8 games to make up for the cold streak. Now let’s talk about that fourth 3, because this is where he’s got serious problems. The 3 was a joke. It was a heave at the buzzer because he wasted the possession. And this was a problem all night. Reed brought the ball up, and when Walsh came at him, he retreated almost to halfcourt. In fact, he turned his back to protect the ball. Anyone who’s ever coached kids has seen them do this. They get so rattled that they freak out, give up space, and then give up their court vision by turning away. It’s suicidal. The fact that Reed is still doing this as an NBA player is alarming. You cannot play PG in this league with that kind of timidity and panic. Reed has zero confidence in his ability to take on a defender without a screen. Again and again, he stands there dribbling and waits for Mr. Durant or somebody else to create an option for him. So he ended up with that silly heave at the end of the 1st. And then on the next possession, starting the 2nd, he did the same thing. This time it was Pritchard facing him. If Reed was ever gonna take on a defender, this was the guy. But he wouldn’t do it. Just stood there dribbling till the clock ran down to 7 seconds, at which point Tate tried to rescue him and got a grenade for his trouble. I don’t think it’s an accident that Ime subbed Reed out shortly after that debacle. I think he saw that Reed was killing us not by missing 3s but by failing to get us into an offense. In fact, when Ime brought Reed back at the end of the 2nd, he also put in Davison and let him bring the ball up, with Reed parked in the corner as a shooter. Basically he demoted Reed from PG. Maybe Reed’s lack of confidence is justified. Maybe if he tried harder to beat his man, even just a little to get the play started, he’d lose the ball. But if that’s true, then he shouldn’t be playing PG, at least not till he improves his handle and maybe his strength. And that sucks, because PG is the position we really needed him to fill.
