Ah Hart. A casualty of dumbass Morey. What a shame. Cut for Nwaba. Now one of the best paint defenders and paint scorers in the league.
The Rockets have already shown signs of how they might want to use Sheppard. While the extra work Friday was with Sheppard handling the ball around screens, in the games he also cut around off-ball screens set by Adams in Utah and Jock Landale in Oklahoma City to get catch-and-shoot looks. That would allow him to work with either starting guard, Green or VanVleet, or with Thompson. “It’s good you can mix him in with several different lineups,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “The versatility that he brings on and off the ball, he’ll do both. It’s always going to take a little time for rookies … to kind of adapt to the size and speed of the NBA. He looks good. It’ll continue to slow down for him. “He picks up everything quickly. He is who we thought he was when we drafted him. I talk about the IQ and the shooting, but the toughness is a little underrated. He has that. Just another complementary piece to what we have.” The Rockets seemed to have begun adding actions tailored to Sheppard’s skills. Against the Jazz, the Rockets even ran a sideline out-of-bounds play to free their rookie guard. “Personnel dictates some of the things you want to run,” Udoka said. “For us, we talked about him being a guy that is very complimentary on or off ball. And so, the shooting threat and his IQ, you can plug him into certain areas right away.”
Yeah - that’s exactly my point. Defenses are taking away his strength when they get him to take mid range shots
They are both his strength. Teams will try to take away the three and protect the basket. Having an elite mid-range is a huge advantage.
Sounds like Udoka really likes him. He might get minutes right from the get go. "Toughness" is what gets you on the floor under Udoka.
Ask McHale or MDA playing hard is a thing you don't have a stat on but Defense is a thing you can measure.
Exactly. You take what the defense gives you. No need to force a bad/contested shot just because it's a 3 when you have the ability to consistently hit wide open mid-range 2's at an elite clip. This is exactly what we were missing with CP3 being out when everyone was clanking 27 straight 3's off the rim and no one would attempt the common sense shot in that situation. MDA was too stubborn and wouldn't adjust when the situation called for it.
I'd say it's just not RS job to create opportunities for 3s for himself. Here's a few areas that we have to consider... - The GS offense uses a series of screens to free Steph for those wide open shots. We could do more of this and to your earlier point the types of screens could be adjusted to get him a clearer opportunity. - So far in the 2 PS games, RS has been open in the corners and other areas, but hasn't gotten the ball. Some of this is guys looking for their own shots, but at some point getting him wide open shots is going to be more productive than guys trying to force drives. - When Reed gets more comfortable with his role and place on the team, he will take more 3s. When he brings the ball up the court, he has outstanding range and can take some pull-ups. I don't think he wants to unleash that yet, until he's proven himself a little more. He's a smart kid and is playing the right way. He's definitely playing more conservatively until he earns his place on the team (those that have played will understand what I mean). For me, I'm just enjoying the ride and watching how our young guys are developing.
Yeah - I wish we had him but it did take 4 other teams and one defensive genius to unlock Harty. Yeah - I called out the offensive system in another post. When we run a style of offense where advantages are created form the point of attack on ball, it puts a lot of pressure on that ball handler and the two guys who are best able to create advantages individually also happen to be the poorest distributors on our team. An elite playmaker on this roster would be a HUGE game changer here in terms of maximizing all these guys we know are capable of more like Jabari and Reed. The problem is those guys are really hard to come by so either we run the offense in a different t way that doesn’t rely on the Harden/Luka model of drawing a double and making offense out of catching teams in their rotations OR we figure out a better way to make Sengun centered offense work. The problem with the Sengun centric offense so far is he increasingly uses the touches to score when the team would be better off with Sengun having 8+ assists a night rather than 20+ points because in theory those assists are being converted into 3s or are getting rhythm guys easier shots to help their touches which in turn makes it harder to send doubles to Sengun down low.
He might not have the first step to get past guys all on his own but really he doesn't need that - If he can navigate a pick, he can get open and or create shots for others as a result of that. That team play also gets other players involved and moving instead of standing around waiting for the hero to do his thing. There's a reason teams have been running the pick and roll for over a hundred years - it works .... For a history lesson have a read of the 1922 book Scientific Basketball by Nat Holman.
Morey has literally said anybody that's good at the mid-range should take the mid-range. The fact is most players in history aren't SGA, CP3, KD, Jokic, Kyrie, DeRozan, etc. Instead, they're dudes shooting 40'ish% or less still taking mid-range shots. Last year, there were like 13 players who shot at least 3 mid-range shots per game that shot it over 45% and only 3 of those shot over 50%. BTW, I don't watch much NBA anymore outside of Houston's games, but I was shocked to see Deandre Ayton in the top 3. With Sheppard, I think he'll come around to shooting 3's, but if you're expecting him to sit around jacking 3's like Curry, I don't think that's going to happen very soon in-game unless they just leave him open. He's going to have to get accustomed to the NBA 3 and how defenses are going to (hopefully) have to focus on him. I'm glad he's getting that mid-range in and they're actually running plays for him that incorporate it. There was one where he was running around picks to pop a mid-range shot from what I recall. Throughout high school his shooting (not just 3's), passing, defense, and BBIQ were his strengths. Same in college. In the pros, I'm hoping to see his shooting, passing and defense stay strengths - that's still to be seen. I had to look it up, but Steph shot 41.5% on 2.5 mid-range attempts per game last year. For anyone else wondering - Reed, in the pre-season, has been shooting 80% on 2.5 attempts per game in the mid-range. That puts him 7th in the pre-season for people shooting 2.0 or more shots from mid-range. If you constrain the criteria by saying "2.5 or more mid-range shots per game", he becomes #1.
