Reed Sheppard arrived at the University of Kentucky last season as a decent shooter. Both his parents had played basketball for the Wildcats, meaning he’d been schooled in the nuances of swishing a basketball through an 18-inch hoop since his first attempts on a kiddie rim. But when Sheppard hears his name called early in the NBA draft on Wednesday night, it won’t be because he’s a decent shooter. It will be because, during his lone season in college, he transformed into something entirely different. He became the best long-range shooter in the country. The story of Sheppard’s one-year overhaul doubles as the story of how data is reshaping the very foundations of sports. At Kentucky, he became obsessed with a screen affixed to the wall at the practice facility, whose readouts told him how close he’d gotten to the perfect shot. Sheppard would hoist a 3-pointer, watch the net ripple, and look immediately at the “Splash Board,” which told him how close to the platonic ideal of arc and aim he’d just gotten. “He was looking at the Splash Board on every shot, every day,” said John Carter, CEO of Noah Basketball, the shot-tracking company that manufactures the product. “He was just so dialed into it.” Noah’s technology, which is used by nearly every NBA team, focuses on distinctions much finer than simple makes and misses. Using cameras installed above a court, it tracks a shot’s angle, depth, and left-right aim, and supplies instant readouts on its massive screen. Shots that land in the ideal range of all three metrics—approaching the basket at 45 degrees, just grazing the back rim on its way down—register as “splashes.” As soon as he got to Lexington last summer, Sheppard started a new routine centered around that board. Every afternoon, he’d walk onto the Wildcats’ practice floor accompanied by John Welch, an assistant coach who had spent the previous two decades helping NBA stars refine their shooting strokes. Then Sheppard would fire up some country music and set to work. He’d launch one 3-pointer after another—almost always from the NBA line nearly 20 inches deeper than the college arc—and make adjustments, aiming for the perfect score. “You can know if your shot feels good,” Sheppard said, “but you’re not gonna shoot it and look [at the ball] and be like, ‘It was 45 arc.’ Having that immediate feedback is really cool.” There was just one problem: Sheppard quickly became too good of a shooter for the workouts to yield much benefit. “Standard catch-and-shoot just became too easy for him,” Welch said. So Welch recruited other members of the program—including a 7-foot team manager—to leap toward Sheppard with their arms raised while Sheppard shot. And still the pattern held: splash, splash, splash. During Kentucky’s actual games, the transformation was obvious. In his last season of high-school and AAU basketball, Sheppard made 32% of his 3-pointers. In his one season in Kentucky blue he made 52%, the highest mark in the whole country. Even though he came off the bench, Sheppard emerged as one of the Wildcats’ most feared offensive weapons. And NBA teams quickly started sending him to the tops of their draft boards. Sheppard is expected to be picked as early as the top five. The amazing thing is that the official numbers weren’t even Sheppard’s most impressive ones. According to Carter’s data, he had the best make- and splash-percentages of any college basketball player whose team used the Noah system. The analysis offered by the Splash Board goes beyond merely codifying shooting. It actually upends decades of inherited wisdom about the best way to get a ball into a basket. Welch explained that he used to believe the classic “swish,” arcing high and landing perfectly in the center of the rim, was the ideal shot. “It’s so pretty,” he said. “It’s like a snowflake, it pops the net.” But when he began working with Carter’s data during his time in the NBA, he quickly realized that the most accurate shooters actually shoot the ball on a slightly lower line, which gives them greater range. They also tend to clip the back of the rim, because aiming deeper in the basket increases the margin for error. According to Welch, some 70% of 3-point misses fall short. Still, Welch said, there can be a risk if players become too fixated on their numbers. He remembered an afternoon when Sheppard seemed to be overthinking things, his shots sailing long or coming up short. “I thought it might be in his head, I was just getting ready to say something,” Welch said. “And then he made 42 straight 3s.” https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/reed-sheppard-kentucky-nba-draft-790cb365 ---------------- ALL our guys should practice like that.
Great advice! If we could bring in PG13 at the right price he'd be a great vet star to assimilate. If we replaced Dillion with him, that would be preferable to pursuing KD.
I like this part of the article on defensive positives and BBIQ.... There's also a savant basketball mind. The level that Reed Sheppard processes the game at, as a 19-year-old freshman, is absolutely out of this world. Sheppard has an unbelievable knack for getting his hands on the ball. He had 23 blocks this season as a 6-foot-3 SEC freshman coming off the bench, and he had a whopping 82 steals. That's the highest steal rate of any high-major freshman guard since at least 2008 (probably longer since that's as far back as the database goes). It's not just that Sheppard isn't a defensive liability. The numbers say he's a clear value add on that end of the court. Over the final month of the season, facing eight top-100 opponents in nine games, Sheppard had a 2% block rate and a 5.2% steal rate. That's outrageous numbers for someone his size, and Kentucky leapt from 147th to 18th in Defensive Net Rating with Sheppard on the court and from 156th to 51st in turnovers forced. What he does do is take care of the ball at an elite level and make consistent efficient decisions that optimize his teammates and his team's chances of winning. His processing speed at this age is incredible, and his instincts help him move the ball quickly. He also has that Lonzo pass-ahead in transition. He's just constantly creating efficient looks for his teammates.
I probably watch as much college and nba than anyone on this board. I thought they should've taken Mobley before Green. When it comes to Smith Jr vs Banchero, Banchero wax the superior player and the rox had no chance. Watching Sheppard, I don't see it. I don't see Nash, Price, CP3 or anyone like that with his size. I see a spot shooter and I don't think you draft a spot shooter at 3.
1) You didn't watch him if you think he is only a spot up shooter 2) Even if that's all he is, which he's not, if you told me we get a generational spot up shooter (our current biggest weakness on the team) in the worst draft in years, then I'm all for that
