Ironically, Reed could learn a lot from JJ Redick about maximising his opportunities, because at his height he likely isn't ever going to be a featured shooter/scorer to get time and rhythm shots. It's criminal that we aren't running some simple off-ball screen actions to get him rapid-release looks though. Until he (if he?) gets the opportunity for minutes running the point significantly he may have to accept that it's going to be that kind of role for some time, so he needs to learn how to get himself open if coach won't, and then hit the few shots he does get. Until that he might not even get to a JJ Redick level.
They are completely different players stylistically and Sheppard has a MUCH higher ceiling. You might as well say that Amen could learn a lot from JaeSean Tate....I mean, maybe he could, but there's not really any reason why he'd be a suitable mentor.
Steve Nash was terrible in his rookie year. He had a eFG% of .489 which, while better than Sheppard's .452, was even worse than Jabari's .514 which everyone thought was a total crap rookie season. He shot the 3 well, but couldn't shoot anywhere else on the court. Also he was 22 when he entered the league after his senior year. Which makes DaDakota's comparison a bit awkward, but he didn't exactly hit the ground running when he entered the NBA.
If Reed was drafted by the Spurs and given the same minutes as Castle he would have won ROY. It is criminal he wasn’t given at least 15-20 minutes per game. We overachieved in the regular season and our glaring weakness that Reed could have addressed, made us lose to a 7 seed. Ime chose short term progress over long term success. I for one would have been perfectly happy to lose an additional 5 games or whatever if Reed would have been developed properly. Now we go into the offseason with no idea if he could take over for FVV or if we should resign FVV. Absolute clown show.
In Ime's defense, Reed was total ass at the beginning of the season and he kept getting minutes for a while. Hopefully, he can build on the better games he had this season and carry it, ready-to-go, next year.
He was being jerked in and out of the game member getting a chance to get comfortable... Ime's incompetence when it comes to player management only made things worse. Then Reed finally goes to RGV and the coaches undo the damage Ime did in less than one game. After that point, Reed hit over 40% of his 3's the rest of the season despite his minutes still being irregular. If Reed Sheppard was drafted by any other team, or if the Rockets had essentially any other head coach, then he's the unanimous rookie of the year. He was just unfortunate enough to be drafted by the team with the most incompetent head coach in the league when it comes to player management. Basically basketball Dusty Baker.
You might be right. There's another way to look at it though. Maybe continuing to play Reed through the struggles would have hurt his confidence even more. Maybe that break from the court and G-League time allowed him to collect himself and come back with more confidence.
Poor Reed has bad luck with coaches. Calipari and Udoka held him back from stardom. He would be Steph Curry if we hired Mark Jackson.
Saying a rookie playing badly at beginning of the year is like saying water is wet. Jabari played like ass his entire rookie year and average 31mpg. Amen shot 40% and 12% from 3s in his first 10 games and didn't get yanked around. Reed had 5 games where he played over 20 minutes last year, and three of them were the "rest all starters" games. Udoka absolutely did not treat Reed like a player he wants to develop for the long term.
I could see that if not for the fact that playing through the struggle is exactly what they let him do in RGV to undo the damage Ime did. He looked terrible the first time he got out on the court in RGV... he then was reassured he wasn't going to be permabenched after any mistake and that let him get comfortable on the court.... on the way to scoring 49. If Ime was coaching down there, Reed would have been pulled after 2 minutes and the issue would have gotten worse. There's things Ime is good at, and there's things he's embarrassingly bad at. Player management just happens to be one of the bad things. It would be great if we could bring in a coach to teach him how to be a coach in those areas
Reed simply wasn't good enough. Y'all are making up excuses and realities in order to make it seem like things were less meritocratic. Plenty of reasons to be optismtic about his future but he was simply too timid and overwhelmed his first year. He will need to work on his body now that he knows what to expect and start working on an even quicker release.
Both those guys played during the re-build years when the team was focused on re-building and actually wanted to lose. This year was about making the playoffs. I believe the organization chose winning over development. I thought they could win enough to make at least the play-in even if they chose to further develop their young players. Ime turned over his offense to FVV and decided that giving 40m to one of the worst starting pg’s in the league was more important than developing Amen, Reed, and Cam. Amen only got awarded starter minutes due to injury and his incredible defense. Unfortunately, I believe they are going to make the same mistake this off-season and extend FVV and Ime will again start FVV and Dillon until one of them gets injured and forces his hand. Stone will again kick the can down the road. We will end up with a lower seed and suffer through another year of inept offense, at which time the FO and Ime will either be gone or given an ultimatum and all the FVV and Ime sycophants will see the light and be calling for Ime’s head, and, maybe Stone’s.
Nash is a great comparison for what his ceiling could be.......but that is his CEILING.....and he was 19. DD
There IS a difference between playing rookies on a good team vs a rebuilding one. We were much more in rebuilding mode last year than this one. TLDR: You can't shop in the juniors section forever.
No there isn't, if you have a talented rookie and you know the core isn't good enough you also should be developing those rookies as backups. Ime spit the ****ing bit this year and wasted both Cam and Reed's entire years - in a year we were not a contender....wasted time. DD
His numbers in his 3 starts this past year would've easily been not just ROTY, but one of the best rookie seasons in recent memory. And he did it against playoff competition.
So the 'core isn't good enough'....but they finished 2nd in the West and had the 3rd best record in the league and took a tough veteran GS team(better than their seeding) to 7 games? I agree that we have to make changes to get to the next level, but to gaslight us and say that: a. This isn't a good team when the record and performance says 90% of teams would trade places with us b. Reed and Cam are SO good when all evidence suggests both were pretty bad defensively(yes, there are two sides to the ball, DD) ....both are super young guys(20 years old) - we can afford to take our time and let them get better at both the fundamentals they lack and the craft that makes them effective in the first place. As good as Cam is as a scorer, I remember some ROUGH shooting stretches for him - same with Reed and his shooting...but more importantly, both lack defensive fundamentals. You gotta get those in place before 'playing through the struggles' can actually pay off. We didnt do that with our young guys earlier in the rebuild because we didn't have much of a choice but this is how normal development should happen. There IS a difference between playing rookies on a good team vs a rebuilding one. I think Cam and Reed both are going to be good players, but let's be honest - if they were REALLY going to be our franchise saviors, don't you think they would have shown a lot more than what they did with the time they did have this year? Be reasonable here instead of walking into a room yelling about the same thing you were yelling about in the last 10 rooms you visited.
So they won meaningless regular season games before becoming the 7th 2 seed in nba history to lose to a 7 seed. A 7 seed that got crushed in the next round. Ime clearly prioritized meaningless regular season games over long term success and success in the playoffs.... so we got meaningless regular season wins rather than anything that matters.
