I'm here for the ride and not rushing to judgement, but Reed's gotta start hitting some threes. I think he's clearly in a funk. I don't know if he's just burnt due to the defensive effort required or if it's just a confidence thing.
This has been a glaring issue for a few games now. Tari specifically has been outright bad. He looks like rookie Tari Eason out there lately. Amen looked like a deer in the headlights yesterday but has been mostly fine. He kinda has this Sengun thing going on right now where you can tell he's reserved about doing certain things offensively (like Sengun still second guesses anything that isnt his push shot or something around the rim). Jalen has been Jalen. He's a gunner that's not shy about driving to the basket when he shouldn't and jacking up 3s when he shouldn't. Though I do think that lately he's been a wee bit better about his decisions to hoist ill advised 3 point shots. He's been largely terrible on offense though and he's the main reason why we're finding ourselves constantly relying on Fred to bail us out of situations. That should be Jalen at this point but he just hasn't gotten there. I'm really happy with where Reed is at right now. I feel like the fear of his shooting is noticeable by opposing defenses and it allows Alpy more freedom in the paint. I'm sure the scouting report on Reed is "DONT LOSE SIGHT OF THIS MAN". Seems like defenses could care less about literally everyone else on the team as it pertains to 3s. I think they've abandoned covering Tari at this point.
The PG position is not as important when you have a "point center" like we do. The PG will bring the ball up and get it into the hub (aka Alpi). That being said, Amen, Alpi, and Reed all have extremely high B-Ball IQ's. There will be a ton of passing between the three of them as well as to open shooters. It should be poetry in motion once they have all matured. 2-3 years from now this team will be really special once these 3 get used to playing with each other and build chemistry.
I'm not sure if patience is going to derail the promise so much as budget and total roster needs - can we afford to keep all the highIQ bball players? Assuming Jalen is not the long term solution at SG, we still need to identify some guard/wing shotmaker to bring in which will likely be expensive to sign OR cost us assets to get that player.
DId you expect him to step onto the court day one and be the next Curry? He is a rookie and will take time to develop. I know you were against him to begin so you will be negative no matter what until he does blossom. Ime has a history of bringing rookies along slowly. Amen was averaging about the same amount of minutes as Reed at this point of the season last year. By the end of the season Reed will be getting more minutes and playing better just like Amen but it will be next season before he truly starts to shine just like Amen.
We gave Jalen 4 years of do whatever the **** you wanna do on offense just to find out he's a role player. I can put up with 2 years of Reed playing limited and tamed.
I agree with the vision but all 3 of those guys still have quite a bit of work ahead of them to find a 'go to' way that breaks defensive schemes and forces help to find those shooters. - Reed needs to be a more consistent shooter and needs to find ways to create gravity from the threat of his shot. This in turn will help us to utilize him to unlock clearer driving lanes for athleticism guys like Jalen, Amen, and Cam. - Amen needs to more consistently have a way to score that forces teams to double him - likely it's a Westbrook style drive to the paint and overwhelm defenders with athleticism but nonetheless it needs to be something defenses have to game plan for so it has to happen more than 2 or 3 times a game. - Alpi has all the offensive moves but his efficiency in the paint has been frankly poor so far this year for a primary creator. He just got to exactly league average efficiency after last night's game. He has to be an instant bucket to force teams to collapse on him because right now if I'm a coach in playoff series playing the Rockets, I'm daring Alpi try to beat me with a monster game in the paint and am not letting him take advantage of all of Houston's connective passers. ...but otherwise - I'm on board. However we find ways to force teams into help situations, Houston is well positioned to take advantage of the unique collection of connective passers, High Bball IQ players, and athleticism this team can roll out.
He WANTS him to fail, so he is looking for anything that can confirm his pre-existing bias. We have seen that before.
You have such a low bar for a top 3 pick. Well I'm def not happy with him I expect him to be the backup pg similar to Mcain or Rob instead of being a victory cigar who gets 5-10 mins a night. I'm not happy with Jalen's offensive struggles but that also means I am extremely unhappy with Sheppard cuz Jalen is outperforming Sheppard. Unlike you Reedsters I am at least consistent and try to be objective. Jalen Green - 53.4% TS Reed Sheppard. - 46.7 TS% You crap on Jalen's offensive struggles but then say you are extremely happy with Sheppard? LOL talk about favoritism and lack of objectivity. Who just had 28 pts and who only had 6 and missed all his 3s? But you're really happy where Sheppard is RN and Jalen is the who keeps shooting when he shouldn't? ok lol. Sheppard has been a total disaster so far, in a redraft nobody would take him 3rd. Even his 3 pt shooting is now below league average so tbh everyone saying they are happy with him are just biased or lying. Can he turn it around? Yeah he is only 20. We are giving 5 plus years to Jalen so Sheppard has that same time to improve. But dont say he is playing great right now cuz he isnt. Theres a reason Ime cant play him more than 10 mins cuz he sucks. If you're really happy with him dont criticize Jalen or Tari cuz both of them are miles better than Sheppard at this point.
I was happy to see Reed go to the rim a little more the last game and not stay out at the three point line as much. He needs to be more aggressive, so that was a nice surprise. He's going to be a nice role player. Of course you want more from a pick that high, but he's very clearly not going to be another Steph Curry anytime soon. The suggestion that he would be was ridiculous. He could be a Mark Price though one day, and that's not bad. Just give him some time.
It wasn't so much he wasn't given time to develop - the players ahead of him were that good. All the people saying "this is how Steve Nash started out" when referring to Reed Sheppard - no, I tend to disagree somewhat. Steve Nash had legit good-to-star players playing ahead of him in Jason Kidd, Rex Chapman, and Kevin Johnson. At one point they also had Michael Finley and Sam Cassell on the team, too. They were loaded in the backcourt/wings. That's what basically kept Nash as a bench player.
Just in cased you missed the game: Highlights: Only missed one assignment, handled himself well defensively again.
When I watch Sheppard play, I see a ton of BBIQ. I am not worried about the shot. 98% of people struggle shooting coming out of college. He makes the right play and there is a lot of room for him to get better athletically. I feel good about him being future FVV.
Yeah, and the other difference is Nash had Jason Kidd as competition for the backup pg. Sheppard has nobody, Stone only signed Holiday as a token backup and didnt sign anybody good on the market when we could've had Tyus Jones or another FA pg. FVV is now suffering from a knee contusion so we'll prob see what Sheppard can do tom vs GSW.
You know there is more to basketball than just scoring. Especially since Reed has been more of a pass first player. Things like Jalen has played almost 500 more minutes than Reed yet only has 5 more steals and 1 more block... Reed also has better assist to turnover ratio. while I don't think he's playing well at all, his defense has been better than what I thought it'd be. His passing/playmaking has been better. The one thing I thought he'd be really good at is shooting and that has been a big disappointment so far. And he's a rookie, Jalen got much more leeway his rookie year. Everyone loved Jalen as a rookie. Now We are in year 4 of the Jalen experiment so he will get judged differently.
While this is true, the fact that we are at the bottom of apg is concerning. Some people blame it to our bad shooting. But bad shooting and lack of good passing go hand in hand. I noticed FVV's assist number dropped from 8.1 to 5.9. Sengun's only nominally increased from 5.0 to 5.3. I've noticed Amen is looking less to pass than last season. Tari's tunnel vision is on the same level as Cam's. Fred is shooting more and passing less. With a good passing big man as the hub, you'd expect more ball movement. But the eye test doesn't seem to match that expectation.
Counterpoint, Reed skeptics are absurd. Reed has hit 16 of 48 threes. (One of which was the awkward buzzer beater the other night.) So he's a disappointing 33.3% shooter. But if he had made 19 of 48 threes, he'd be a terrific 40% shooter. So silly. Add his collegiate 75 makes in 144 to his NBA and he's an amazing 48% shooter. And if you're going to tell me about the college three distance, I'll tell you that plenty of great shooters in the NBA needed a year+ to adjust, and we saw him take (and often make) plenty of 25+ footers in college. Frankly, what I've seen in his shooting is two things: a reluctance to be aggressive, as has been noted by the coaches and reluctance probably plays a role in your numbers. Is he tentative by nature? The long bombs he took in college attest to him being plenty confident and aggressive; he's just being a a cautious trying-to-play-right rookie. And another thing is that smaller players sometimes take a little while to learn how to get their shot off against more athletic players than they encountered in college. Those who don't adjust are the ones who can't dribble and aren't athletic—definitely not issues for Shepp. Everything suggests that he is going to be a terrific shooter. Hell, if you're worried about his 33.3% shooting, do consider that he's on pace to be the greatest free=throw shooter of all-time by a mile. What you should be paying attention to is his 2.2% steal rate and amazing for a guy his size 2.1% block rate. Also very small sample size. But in college it was 4.6% and 2.5%. And if you want to talk scouting, you can think of the little glimpses that indicate his upside, like his excellent passing, how nicely he hung in the air to avoid the contests and maintained control to score on two plays at the rim the other night, his ability to get his shot off in the half court on the CP3 fade aways, and even that almost massive tip dunk that he just barely missed, a few games back. Oh, and he's not been nearly as bad on ball against PGs as some scouts feared. He's been pretty much regular rookie bad, not oh god, he'll never be able to guard PGs bad—like D'Angelo Russell his rookie year. Can you point to anything that's legitimately concerning? I see nothing but very strong promising indicators. Stick around and watch, Shepp is going to be at least a star and maybe a monster star.
