Reed Sheppard report card

Report from the Blazers game:

Nobody's gonna want to hear this after a heartbreaker where he went 1 for 7 from 3 ... but Reed had a really good game. He came in with high energy and did all the right things defensively: anticipation, aggressive positioning, quick feet, balance, footwork before handwork. And he continues to get more and more physical, both on and off the ball and especially on boxouts. He's become way more judicious about when and how to go for steals. The one boneheaded play was when he had Adams to his left, visibly to the inside, and instead let his man go baseline. You could see Adams scolding him for it afterward.

Offensively, yeah, it sucks that those shots didn't go down. I halfway wonder whether he might have been affected by lifting, since he seems to be working on the strength part of the game. But that's just a wild guess, since all his misses were long or short, as though his calibration was off. Especially that first free throw, ouch. That looked like a guy who badly misjudged how much force he was putting on the ball, which from Reed is weird.

The rest of his offensive game: I really liked the aggressiveness. Much less hesitation on shooting than in some previous games, and also some good aggressive drives to a jumper. The one general thing I noticed, as a continuation from the Suns game, was that he made another couple of passes where he turned almost completely around and threw it before he really had his eyes on the situation. These two weren't ripped off, but if he keeps doing it, that's gonna happen again, as it's happened before. I don't mind the no-looks when he at least has peripheral vision on the situation. But when he rotates and simultaneously unloads the ball, stuff happens in between the moment when he lost sight and the moment when he regains it. And that stuff is usually bad.

 

Yeah, I don’t mean people who are locked in on hating or dismissing a player, though you’re right that this happens a lot. In this case I just mean that we tend to judge a player’s performance by the box score, especially shooting or scoring. When Jabari or Reed has a bad shooting night, a lot of fans don’t seem to notice anything else they’re doing to help the team.

 

Report from the Friday Blazers game:

Two airballs in this game, plus falling on his butt to give up a dunk. Ugh. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, he was one of our best contributors.

For 3 straight games, he’s done all the right things defensively: high energy, stepping up on ball handlers, cutting off their options, and defending with feet before using his hands. And for a long stretch of games he’s been steadily getting more physical. His boxing out and denial of cuts have improved enormously. In this game he was an electron, covering guys all over the place: helping in the lane, standing up Clingan twice and forcing him to unload the ball, then zipping out to contest 3’s. He’s also fighting over more screens, including the handoff attempt where he took the ball from Yang for a dunk.

The most notable thing, IMO, was that he sustained the high energy and aggressiveness into the 4th, attacking ball handlers and driving them back, which led to a couple of good double teams with Okogie. He’s showing he can maintain this level of defense through longer minutes, which is crucial to earning more time on the court.

The other thing he has to do to earn Ime’s trust is cut down on the dumb swipes and gambles. I counted only 2 bad decisions in this game: reaching in on Rupert when he should have just contested, and trying to steal a pass in the 4th that left us shorthanded and led to an easy bucket.

On offense, the biggest change from previous games was that instead of just standing in the corner, he was cutting to the middle, drawing defenders, and trying to make a play from there. It was sometimes pretty awkward, in part because our other guys didn’t move to give him easier passing angles, and in part because he’s still figuring out how much space he has to work with, and what his options are, once he gets into the tall trees. I’m betting he’ll figure this out, because you can see that he’s already figured out the previous thing he was working on, which was where to release the ball and how high to arc it to lay it off the glass over shot blockers.

I played back his missed shots and looked for patterns. His most common mistakes seem to be 1) unnecessarily high arc and 2) unnecessarily quick release. In both cases, the simplest explanation is that he’s afraid of getting blocked. He sometimes does the same thing inside, like when he had a nice drive but released awkwardly with the left as he approached Clingan. Actually Clingan was hanging back, so Reed could have just gone up and taken his normal shot. Some of these misses will turn into buckets as he gets familiar with his options and moves inside.

So that’s one thing he needs to keep working on. Another is using contact. You can see that he’s sometimes getting fouled with no call, like the full-court drive where he got bodied on the finish, and the play where he got muscled near the sideline and nearly lost the ball out of bounds. Those calls will come as the refs start to give him more respect. But he also has to take more initiative. Rupert was sometimes hanging all over him, but Reed didn’t do what Fred would have done: Lean in, force the contact, and make the referees blow a whistle.

I came out of this game thinking 1) Reed has raised his defense to a level of competence that lets us keep him in the game at little cost, 2) we need more of what he did offensively this time, in terms of creating action and options for teammates (instead of just standing in the corner), and 3) he’s going to get better and better in that role with more PT. All of which tells me we should keep increasing his minutes and his role in the offense. And for the rest of the time Sengun is out, I would try starting him.