Reed Sheppard is the Rockets’ Franchise Player™

Everyone ignores that for all of Castle's attributes, selecting him with Amen and Alperen on the team would be lunacy. Three non-shooters in the starting lineup? They'd be lucky to crack 80.

 

Ime would love it, but the Rockets would be terrible

 

Ime would c u m

 

Amen would be gone, they would be COMPLETELY unplayable.

 

Fun fact: in his post game presser re: Reed, Ime actually said "I loved the '5-point line' pull up even though he airballed. That just shows his confidence, and he was on a good streak there. We're gonna need that from him."

It was also refreshing to see them celebrate together after one of Reed's big threes in the 4th. Maybe their tough love relationship will work out after all.

 

I hope so. I'll give Ime this, I think Reed's p***y play bothers him more than anything (as it does most of us)

Udoka needs to understand that his traditional way of pulling Reed for every mistake just is very short sighted

 

Been lobbying for him to start, he got to finish the game at least. Reed with the starters is definitely the answer. Yes it's a small step back defensively, but it's a much bigger step forward offensively. It means no matter who we pass the ball to, you're worried about an elite skill. Makes us far less predictable.

I really don't see an issue defensively with Reed starting - it's always possible to hide one player as long as they try hard. Sengun has to guard the big, no one else can. Reed has to guard the PG or the smallest player on the court, chase them around, full court pressure, etc. That leaves the SG/SF/PF spots to be guarded by Amen, Jabari and Durant which they're totally capable of doing.

 

Agreed. I had a high school coach who said, "I can live with mistakes if you're making them at full speed."

I think Ime can live with those kinds of mistakes too. It's when Reed plays timid that it's hard to keep him out there.

 

Castle is redundant with Amen. Some of y'all don't understand how teams work.

 

Reed is up and down defensively. They were talking about this on Vecenie's podcast the other day. Some games he looks OK, particularly when teams aren't scheming to exploit him. In some games teams just go after him and he looks helpless out there. The question being whether he can hold up in a playoff series against teams who are specifically gameplanning to take advantage of weaknesses. Or, can he be elite enough on offense that it doesn't matter?

When he's hitting shots and being aggressive our offense looks completely different. There's been some inconsistency on that end too though (maybe partly due to inconsistent minutes).

Overall, I think I'd be in favor of just starting him now and letting him develop. I don't see this team as a strong contender anyway, just a fringey one. We need to develop the young core

 

I think he's still just a poor defensive talent with some redeeming qualities in effort and deflections. That's alright. We can figure out how to hide him pretty effectively. I think the defense can mostly hold up (top 7-10 defense).

I don't think we can afford to not have his shooting in the starting lineup. The offense desperately needs it. His shooting and playmaking makes the team much less predictable and opens up driving lanes for the key playmakers.

 

Castle is a better pg than Amen but even that is besides the point. Ime plays Amen all the freaking time and there is a reason why he's not playing at the dpoy level defense this year. You guys who think a team only uses one copy of each player are the real people who dont know how NBA basketball work.