Once they pressured Reed full and half court not only did he crumble for 8 minutes, but so did most of the team. We were the better team, easily, but the pressure made him non-existent. Until that gets fixed, he’s going to hand cuff the offense when they get physical with him. He has to find a way to be productive or at least give the the other 4 more space to operate.
I can't find it now, but this is EXACTLY the same point Sam Vecenie was making on the Game Theory podcast a few years ago about why skilled small guards like TyTy Washington are having a hard time sticking in the league because teams just aren't developing players at this size because the path for them to be good is so limited because of all the limitations they find themselves operating under in modern NBA defensive schemes. They were effectively advocating for good but not great smaller players just staying in college and getting playing time and development there because they are increasingly not finding that playing time even on lotto teams who would rather invest in more raw taller prospects because the odds are better on those players.
Amen Thompson only averaged 26.8 mpg through the first 28 games of last year before becoming a permanent starter. Tari has never averaged more than 25 mpg through three seasons. The JOKER was at 23.7 mpg through the first 25 games of his second year before becoming a permanent starter. Considering how lost he looked last year, he's right on track in his development. If he deserves the starting spot, history has shown he's going to take it sooner or later. Let's just enjoy this time right now when he's the new hotness, and we focus on all the good things he's bringing to the table in limited minutes, before we inevitably start nitpicking him to death and making him the defensive scapegoat once he ascends to the starting lineup.
You have to run actual plays for him. This no discipline office hampers everyone. Reed can catch and shoot like the best of them it’s just that as a the most junior we don’t put any effort to make it easier on him. if we can’t buy a bucket of 5 plays and get amen and senguin fadeaway long 2s a screen can get reed open
Sheppard would be 75% 3 point shooter if he only shot with his feet planted before shot. Most of his misses he is trying to do something crazy because they aren't going to run many plays for him.
Well that stretch where they pressured him also happened when Ime was committing acts of terrorism with that Tate, Capela and Okogie lineup. It was Reed, Durant & 3 offensive zeros. In a normal lineup they wont be able to sell out with the pressure
Ime still does not trust him enough defensively to leave him out there at the end of the game. Realistically it should be Reed out there instead of Holiday against the Cavs but Reed is still getting targeted on offense. If Reed can develop his defense a little bit more and not get beat off the dribble he will become the starter easily. We desperately need his shooting out there to space the floor for Amen and Sengun.
This is going to happen in the playoffs without a point guard. People are going crazy with this notion Houston doesn’t need one. They need to figure something out by the time the playoffs roll around. The intensity and defensive pressure will be insane.
Reed is 21 Holiday is 29 VanVleet is 31 Huuuuge difference in experience and poise based on the age alone. Reed's going to be there but probably not what we would like to see until year 4 or 5.
In this era of deep analytics, NBA execs and coaches have come to (correct) conclusion that a 6'4" 200 pound defensive ace who can shoot at least 35% from three is a better all around asset than the 6', 170 pound zippy guy who is a complete liability on defense and who gets beat up and worn down trying to constantly drive to the rim against much bigger players who can muscle him. It's also easier to find 6'4" 200 pound guys who are good at defense and can shoot 3s than it is to find short and scrawny guys whose offensive talent is amazing enough to outweigh their other weaknesses. Look at Atlanta right now, they finally put some talent together to help Trae Young and they're winning without Trae Young. I happen to like Trae Young a lot, but it's clear that he's not as valuable as I thought he was. ATL just needed more overall team talent to be more competitive.
Yeah, I think there are two parts to this. The first is the metrics: they are really starting to nail down exactly how an action influences a simulation and can apply that towards individual player's, metrics. They know a defensive deflection from Trae can impact his team's scoring margin by .2pts and a steal may impact it by 1.7pts, and the average player tends to shoot 20% better against him, and his man gets the rebound x% of the time, and so on and so forth and can really granularly asses the positives and negatives into one number of how impactful that player was to winning the game after the fact and they can figure out the floor and ceiling(variance) of that player. The second is contract. Trae is a good example of a guy who has those games where he legit does Steph Curry things and it doesn't necessarily matter at the end of the day if he loses his guy several plays a game because he is pouring in points offensively and he gets a few steals that turn into 'and ones' and he raises his ceiling super high for those games...but then he has a string of floor games where his shot isn't falling and he is letting guys score easily, and then a string of games where he is teetering at average where he scores 25pts on below average efficiency, but his man puts up 20pts on higher efficiency, etc. Trae strikes me as a guy with a high ceiling but a low floor and hence a lot of variance in his day to day play. You can go on a run with a guy like that - maybe even win a few series that way but on balance, those guys aren't worth the investment of 25%-35% of their cap like a max player would contribute. It's not really about Trae or Jah not being a good player - they can be one of the best basketball players in the world on a given night - but their salary makes them a bad investment because you don't have enough money left to supplement the things your team needs when those players are playing closer to their floor or just an average night. Jalen Green is a good example of this phenomenon and represent an awareness across the league that teams are starting to be smarter about correlating on court impact to contract value. Jalen was definitely a guy who would have got a max contract 15+ years ago because when it looks good - he looks like a scoring champ....but the net of his value on court is fairly low. He's basically on average a lower tiered NBA starter who has the ceiling of a star but his floor is so low that he is never going to get that type of contract unless he is able to raise that floor significantly.
Will he be ready for the playoffs? Not a FVV fan but you can see how they miss a reliable bal handler and a guy that can set people up.
Fantastic breakdown and spot on about high ceilings with low floors not usually being worth big investments because the low/average games, particularly if the player isn't scoring efficiently, drag down the ability to build a better aggregate team if you're giving them a contract based on the high ceiling games. JG's one and only playoff series is a small sample size of playoff games, but represented the overall picture of JG's ability to contribute: one superstar game, one kind of mediocre/average game, and five absolute clunker games where his presence on the court was a detriment to the team. JG would go on those post-AllStar break heaters and we'd think he finally unlocked a higher floor, and then he'd prove his doubters correct by showing that the low floor didn't seem like it was going away any time soon. The Rockets would have won that series against GSW if JG had simply been more consistent in his production, rather than being so easily taken out of the game by an old and tired GSW team. They didn't need him to be a hero, just to not suck in five out of seven games. Stone and the front office had seen enough at that point and knew what his player value to the team truly was. I wish JG the best and thank him for the work he put in here, but I was glad when we traded him.
