When will Reed be placed into the starting lineup?

Putting your 5 best scorers in the starting lineup isn't always the right thing. Total minutes are most important, followed by 4th quarter playing time. That bench unit also scares the living daylights out of me.

I'm a big Tari fan, but IMO, the injury woes have removed any chance of him supplanting Jabari in the starting lineup. I think we can toss that idea out once and for all.

For his 1st half minutes, I think Reed operates best without KD and Alpi both on the floor. Bringing him in at the 6 min mark of the 1st quarter and playing him straight thru into the 2nd quarter is ideal both for the team and his own development. I think pairing him with Adams, who sets great screens, works well on offense. Reed also seems to bring out the best in Capela on offense.

IMO, the main reason to start Reed is the alternatives aren't working well. The Rockets exploded against the Cavs midway in the 1st when Adams went to the bench. Same exact same thing happened midway in the 2nd quarter against the Nuggets. The double-big lineup is failing and I think Ime continues with it because of Okogie's lack of shooting recently.

At this point in his career, Reed doesn't help the Rockets unless he's shooting. If he starts, his opportunities to shoot are diminished. The alternative right now is to either start Okogie or Adams, neither of which is working.

Rockets badly need DFS and Tari to bolster the starting lineup, keep Reed in his most productive playing slot and take rotation minutes away from Holiday, who is best as a spot player.

 

As the past few games have shown, the offense doesn't work very well without Reed Sheppard in the game. How many times are we going to put the team in a hole by not starting Sheppard only to have Sheppard come in and dig the team out of it?

Going with no guards at all in the lineup is foolish....and no, Amen is not a guard.

 

Reed is just fine doing what he's doing... 3 weeks ago, we wanted him to start looking for an AirBnb near Laredo .. For now , a certified scorer off the bench is better than having him in with the starters sitting in the corner looking lost... I'd let him improve his handles when looking to playmake for others before I throw him in the starting lineup.. I'd like to see the coaching staff actually let him run actual offensive sets a few possessions as well to see how he handles it..

 

did we start the 2nd half as good as we ended the first half? was reed as effective starting the 2nd half as he was off the bench in the first half? the objective should be to get the best out of him and what's best for the team. right now maybe coming off the bench is best for both.

 

Edinburgh, where RGV plays, is about 150 miles from Laredo...just an FYI

 

Didn't realize Laredo had that kinda cache to have suburbs that far out .. My bad bruh!

 

At this point it needs to happen sooner than later.

Teams aren’t respecting Amen yet to go over the screen and that clogs the paint for Amen, Sengun and KD who all live in the paint for their shot diet.

Starting Reed, Amen, Jabari, KD & Sengun is much more balanced

we need to start seeing Reed/Sengun actions to get KD & Jabari open jumpers and Amen on baseline cuts in the dunker spots where he excels

but at the same time let amen play PG reps in the secondary role so he continues to develop

 

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The better he looks, the less I'm inclined to insert him into the starting lineup.

He's 90th percentile in creation true shooting percentage, but just 48th percentile in creation shot attempts. He's also 85th percentile in teammate effective FG% off his potential assists, but just 5th percentile in number of potential assists and 19th percentile in time on ball. We need the ball in his hands more, and that's just not happening if he plays the majority of his minutes with Sengun, KD, and Amen.

As you can see below, there's currently an odd synergy where KD benefits from Reed being on the floor (I imagine mostly due to spacing), but Reed is clearly better without KD. I feel like the solution to optimizing their time together is to swap some of their usage, but that may not happen until next year as Reed improves and KD naturally declines.

 

So Durant treating Reed like his little brother is just lip service? He doesn't really look after Reed on the floor?

 

We have struggled starting out lately especially with the double big being 1-3 when we start that.

Reed is our starting PG of the future, might as well get him in there now.

DD

 

KD and Sengun look to get themselves going primarily, if they are having a good game, they then look to get others involved....a bit. If they are having bad games, they ONLY look to get themselves going.

It is what it is.

 

Can you provide the same with Reed/Alpi, Reed/Adams and Reed/Capela?

 

Or maybe Reed needs to get more minutes with the big boys so he can start taking what's his and the other guys can become more comfortable flowing with him. Unless KD is just an a$$hole ballhog (which isn't the case) they will figure it out with reps. Just accepting that 2 of your 3 best offensive players (neither of which need to be ball dominant) will not play well together this early in the season is foolish.

When Reed is going well he's going to get the ball, he gets perpetually passive when KD is on the floor. Give it away and run to the corner.

 

Only 1 of the 3 losses, the last one, involved a slow start by the double bigs.

Whether double big or not, I think likely sooner or later, Reed will be starting.

 

We have been getting off to slow starts lately, even with Okogie.....Reed is the only PG outside of Davidson, he should be starting, to help space for Alpi, and KD.

DD

 

See this doesn't make sense to me...

The general consensus when Fred went down was that the Rockets needed a PG.
Now that Reed is emerging as a viable threat as a PG......we don't want a PG after all?

I think people are overthinking this...

If Fred did not get hurt Amen, Sengun, KD would all handle the ball less.

There's no reason why they can't do that with Reed.
Also, Ime can do a better job of making sure he is getting a bulk of the initiating and getting more motion in the offense so they aren't relying on so much iso anyways.

It's cool that Sengun can dribble the ball up the court and Amen isn't a total dud with the ball in his hands...It's great that KD can handle it some...

But didn't we all think that they needed more ball handling and a PG to bring all of this together?

 

I may not have done a great job making my point, so let me elaborate.

If Reed were inserted into the starting lineup and he actually got to play on ball and be a PG, then I'd be all for it. But that's not what we currently see when he shares the court with the big three, which brings up the following questions:

• Is the rapidly ascending Sengun going to become less of an offensive hub to accomodate Reed?
• Are we going to abandon the Amen point forward experiment to accomodate Reed?
• Are we consciously reducing the number of touches for our newly acquired HOF iso scorer to accomodate Reed?

Regardless of what I might want or think, my inclination is that Ime isn't particularly enthused about any of those.

What I'm envisioning is Reed coming off the bench such that let's say 2/3 of his minutes are on ball and 1/3 off. Over the course of the next 30-40 games, that's a lot of extra reps. So maybe by the all-star break we're looking at a player who Ime is much more comfortable taking touches away from the big three, and then we consider transitioning him into the starting lineup.

In theory we could do it now and just hope that he gets more touches, but in practice I think he'd end up underutilized.

 

Probably easier for you to do this directly than me uploading screenshots. It's a really interesting site, and not paywalled (mostly anyway).

https://databallr.com/StatLineShift

 

Okogie much like Ariza isn’t a good finisher around the rim and can’t drive consistently into the paint creating more limitations for this offense. I think you start Tari once he’s healthy which would give this team another weapon against defenses.