I’d rather have a crazy talented and athletic player that sulks on the bench than a role player that has a good attitude.
Collier showed what he could do against NBA players last year. If you discount potential and fit, I would trade Reed for Collier anyday, but he does not fit as well as Sheppard on our team. He is a future starting pg that so far is a mediocre shooter. Reed is the opposite. He is a shooter that can’t create. Maybe they tried, but Stone should have gone hard at a combo guard instead of Capella.
The volume and intensity of stupid in this thread is truly next level. Congratulations, you guys did it.
You'd agree it was a generally disappointing performance though, right? That's not to say he's condemned to failure at all, but it wasn't good. It comes off a little JalenOnlyFans to not see the negatives in his performance.
Given the circumstances, I think he did fine. Due to the complete lack of NBA caliber talent on the roster, we couldn't see him in a role similar to what he'd have with the Rockets. He's not a guy that is going to thrive in a role where he has to go one on five playing next to guys that are incapable or unwilling to set proper screens, incapable of making the most basic shots or layups, unwilling or incapable of effectively passing the ball or even dribbling the ball. We saw him get the Steph Curry treatment, and that's not something he's ready to handle on his own....just like Steph Curry wasn't ready to handle at Reed Sheppard's age. My takeaways are that he flashed things we've seen before in the actual NBA, shooting that puts fear in opposing defenses, defensive impact plays, passing ability.....despite the fact that the future Home Depot employees on the team with him were rarely in the right place to receive the passes. The reality is that teams won't be able to defend him like he's Steph Curry without getting absolutely shredded by his teammates in the regular season and when he throws a perfect cross court pass to guys like KD or Jabari....they aren't likely to brick it. So, in short, I saw what I needed to see, next up will be seeing what it looks like with actual NBA caliber players around him.
He was playing with scrubs against scrubs. He was being guarded one on one most of the game and couldn’t get by his man. It is a weakness in his game. It doesn’t make him a bad player or without potential, it just means he’s not ready for a huge on-ball role this season, unless he corrects this weakness. He may be playing with great players in the NBA, but he also will not be playing against scrubs. He is totally reliant on picks and off-ball movement to get his shot. Hopefully, Ime can adjust to a more modern day offense in which Reed could be an excellent shooter off the bench.
I really wanna see his off ball role this year. Dying for it. Let him be our kyle korver with amen at pg. His gravity in that role can make up for his inability to be an iso playmaker
I agree, and looking at how the negotiations for Quentin Grimes have dragged out, I feel like if we had waited on getting Capella and re-signing our bench crew, we might have been able to work out a sign and trade for him (maybe using Tari, Jock and Cam as the centerpieces). I want to believe in Reed but he just hasn't shot well enough to merit significant court time with all his other deficiencies. Frankly, I feel Cam Whitmore gave us more on the court (even last year when the level of his play dipped), but obviously, the Rockets were done with Cam.
Collier is just smaller combo guard Cam Whitmore. If someone were to make a wager on who's going to have a better season next year between Steph Castle, Reed Sheppard and Collier....who would they pick? Who would you pick?
All these excuses for Reed. Next they'll be saying the Sun was in his eyes. I told y'all before they even drafted Reed that he was not ready and had no business being drafted at #3. OTOH, Devin Carter definitely deserved to be picked #3 and he is about to go off this season while the Rockets are still trying to figure out what to do with Reed.
I can not call Reed a bust but he has no business in a contender team. There were a bunch of better players in the draft that could help us in the long term. I was hoping for donovan but Zach or Castle would also do great. I would send Reed for two second rounders instead of Cam
Devin Carter? I like the guy, but we'll see. Some of y'all are so impatient. My god... since Green and Cam is gone, all that hate is pushed towards Reed. I guess you gotta have an outlet.
Not picking on you because others have said similar, but I'm really curious to know how people evaluate a player's on-ball skills. I think if you mean can Reed beat guys in isolation (even with a "mismatch"), yeah I'd agree that Reed isn't that great at this yet. But as you also point out, he is reliant on picks...which fortunately is a huge part of the NBA game (and especially important for guards). FVV is pretty reliant on picks too. So I'm a bit thrown off by this. I think Reed is arguably one of the best at handling ball screens on the team. I'd probably put FVV above him due to his experience and consistency, though I don't think he frequently makes some of the plays Reed seems to consistently make when given the opportunity (lobs, skip passes, etc). Amen* is probably roughly on par, and he has the rim pressure advantage (though Reed has more shooting gravity). Including last year, I think Jalen showed flashes (he even would do skip passes occasionally), but ultimately he was so inconsistent and didn't seem to grow as much as I'd like in this area. Obviously Cam, Tari, Bari, etc., wouldn't be very effective at this either. I like Aaron Holiday, but he's not particularly strong at this. Maybe KD is better as I haven't fully evaluated him and his growth in this area, though I suppose even if he was worse technically, he's a monster offensively regardless. Between his college games (when running ball screens), his SL last year (way more ball screens than we typically saw at Kentucky), his NBA games (especially when he actually got PG duties), etc., it seems pretty clear to me that Reed can excel with ball screens. Hell he was doing some of his best stuff with Jock, Dante, Nate Williams, etc., sharing the floor with him (like that OKC game), and I can only imagine what he'd look like if he got to play more in this role with Sengun, KD, FVV, etc. His ability to manipulate defenses with his eyes, his vision/passing to the corners, his awareness of spacing, his balance on his shots, decent touch around the basket, potentially efficient mid-range game, etc., are all pretty high level IMO. I do think he struggles to get easy baskets, and so until he can reliably make some of these shots (those mid-range ones in particular), he might have these stinker performances where he gets to his spots but doesn't convert. At this stage of his development, I think I care more that he *can* get those shots vs him making them, though there's a very short window with that expectation. He'll need to have an efficient overall game before extensions talks start at the very least (though ideally much sooner). If you don't give Reed on-ball reps, I think you're severely limiting his potential impact on a game (and I'd argue most other options getting those reps likely won't be as effective...unless KD and FVV are playing 40MPG+ every game with high usage). If you make him just an off-ball player, then I think you'll see what we saw last year: a player who can't outperform Aaron Holiday. And that's not a diss necessarily, as Holiday does very well in that role (decent defense, 38%-40% 3pt with decent volume per 36, etc). But I don't think that's a particularly valuable player unless he's hitting closer to 42%-44% from 3pt (possibly even putting up a ton of 26+ foot bombs at a high percentage). Perhaps Reed can do that, but that's a really high bar for him to clear, especially with his defensive issues. And I'm guessing the Rockets didn't plan to draft an Aaron Holiday clone with the #3 pick. I just find it odd people just lump him into this JJ Redick/Kyle Korver/etc type player. Those would still be great outcomes for Reed (especially the JJ one), but I just never really saw Reed that way. His shooting ability wasn't even what stood out the most to me. It has always been his processing/playmaking/ball screen abilities, which combined with his potentially elite shooting, would make for a fairly impactful player on offense. Defense is another story, though as I noted earlier, I'm hoping he can increase his level of physicality and become an overall neutral player on that side (especially given his defensive playmaking). One of my biggest complaints about Reed last year was that he didn't really attack offensively with the ball very much, and he tended to just play this off-ball role (i.e., stand in the corner). That might have been more of an Ime thing, though I also think Reed has issues asserting himself (which fortunately he did better in both SL games, even if G2 was a stinker). *As a sidenote, if Amen and Reed can develop as I'd expect, I love the idea of them both handling the ball quite a bit on offense. Both are great processors, playmakers, etc., and I would like them doing most of the initiation long term (with Sengun being the DHO/short roll hub type big, which also puts a lot of pressure on defenses). I feel like sometimes people think only one of these guys should have the ball, but I think we need multiple high level playmakers to be effective in the playoffs...and hopefully those guys are already on the roster (ideally part of the "core").
This is an interesting takeaway for me to see because I had the exact opposite one. I think we can all agree that being effective in the pnr is part of the on-ball skillset, but my evaluation after watching him play is that he's really bad at this too. I think he's bad at dribble driving, bad at isolation scoring, bad pnr decision making, bad at creating advantages...pretty much just looked bad at everything on-ball related. I am, however, a complete idiot who enjoys watching a lot of basketball but is not very good at analyzing what I'm watching. So I could definitely be way off on this one. That's why I found it interesting that you saw the exact opposite of what I saw. That's why I (and others) lump him in with Reddick/Korver/etc type players, because I see him as a guy that can't really do any of the things listed above, but I am really impressed with his shooting. I did enjoy your post though. Again, super interesting to read thoughts from people who see things I don't see. It makes me feel better about Reed for sure.
We are in win now mode. Our players need to adapt to the role they are given and do well at it or be jettisoned. It’s just reality. I do think Reed can be pretty effective in PnR, but I question how many opportunities he will get with the limited offensive opportunities. He is an FVV type player right now without the defense. With our current rotation are they really going to utilize him as a creator PnR or not. I think not.
I do think he makes a lot of mistakes (20 year old rookie PG in the NBA with limited reps), and like I mentioned before, I did not like his lack of aggressiveness/assertiveness he frequently displayed. He played tentative frequently, and this resulted in very poor play. Honestly it is this "playing tentatively" that concerns me more than anything. Yeah he needs to clean up his handle, avoid some costly turnovers that came from his "home run passes", etc., but those typically get better with reps. A player that isn't confident in himself and his abilities? That's harder to fix. I saw some flashes late in the year (and in this SL) that seem to show that's possibly going away, so I'll be a cautiously optimistic going forward. As for his on ball skills, I'll just post that OKC game again: Yeah it was just one game, but I think you can see the stuff Vecenie is talking about. For the record, I think Reed demonstrated this in other games (including his first SL and at least G1 of this summer league, if not both games). There are some older Game Theory videos if you wanted to hear Sam discuss some of those (plus the bit he briefly commented on with this recent summer league). Also, it isn't like he just got hot from 3 and nailed 7 28+ foot 3pt shots. He was picking apart a good OKC defense and getting fairly easy shots. Well shots that I think *should* be fairly easy, at least for him. He was 7/10 in that game from 2P I believe, and this included some mid-range shots. He shot like 31% from mid-range overall last year, so I think even if he replicated this type of skill/on-ball ability, he probably wouldn't score like he did in that game without getting better at converting those kind of shots on a regular basis (never mind the 3s). If you think Reed can shoot like 40-50% from the mid range, then I think he's a very high end on ball creator at that point, especially given his 3pt shooting as well. Defenses will have to respect those parts of those games, and he's more than capable of making those passes to the open man (like the Jabari, McVeigh, or Dante plays in that OKC video). He doesn't have to create huge separation in order to get to that mid range shot, so the fact he's not as talented in that area as some doesn't matter as much IMO. Of course as long as he's shooting 30% from the mid-range (and especially if he's shooting like 33% or less from 3), then he's not going to look so good. As I mentioned earlier, he's probably the team's 2nd or 3rd best PnR guard (unless you count KD) regardless. So unless FVV is playing 48mpg/82 games, Reed will probably get plenty of opportunities. Jalen leaving (and Cam to a lesser degree) opens up a ton of playmaking duties as he and FVV did most of the heavy lifting last year. Yeah I think KD will take some of that, as will Amen (or so I hope), but I think there's also room for Reed...assuming he's ready. Maybe he's not, in which case he failed what the Rockets demanded from him (i.e., "he needs to be good"). As long as his defense improves, he can probably beat out Aaron Holiday this time (and play more with him), so he can probably stay on the floor regardless. Though if he plays defense like he did last year, it won't really matter with Ime. That's the area where Reed needs to improve or else he'll be off the team IMO. That's mostly what matters on this "win now" team. I do think the Rockets are expecting major things from Reed in this department, hence why they didn't go after another guard (and maybe why certain guards weren't interested, as they might become the 4th or 5th guard on the depth chart). This might prove to be a mistake, but I think it is understandable if you believe in his on-ball skills. If you think he's just an off-ball player, then yeah they definitely need to get another playmaker (or Amen needs to significantly up his PG duties). Unless FVV is in the game, I'm not even sure Reed as a heavy movement/off-ball shooter (a skillset he's not even elite at yet IMO) would be that effective.
I think you can boil all these paragraphs into one obvious note. He is not ready “yet”. Hope someday he will be ready, but it ain’t going to happen this year. If we are serious about competing for a championship this year, we will have to make a move sometime after the 37 game of this year. If we want to do something before that it will be with Tari and/or Reed, filler and draft picks. I like Reed as a development player, but he is more than a year away, in my opinion.
