Reed Sheppard’s Summer League DOMINANCE shows how CRUCIAL he is to Rockets success

Reed Sheppard’s Summer League DOMINANCE shows how CRUCIAL he is to Rockets success

Let’s talk a little Houston Rockets. I want to start with Reed Shepard. Really fun first game in Vegas. 28 points, eight rebounds, and four assists. Seven stocks, four steals, and three blocks in a single summer league game for a guard is frankly outrageous. And he was super aggressive. He took 25 shots. Showed a variety of shot making. hesitation threes, snatchback threes off of a hard uh a dribble uh like a dribble drive off of some ball pressure. He had a super tough left shoulder uh fadeaway in the lane in the first half where he drove left and then just hard pivoted over his left shoulder, knocked down the shot. He had some tough scoop shots in the lane. He pushed his three-point shot further out. He ended up hitting like a 30footer when he got hot in the second half out above the break on the left side. just really showing some of that shot making piece from a bunch of different angles and a bunch of different dribble combinations and a bunch of different spots on the floor. Again, the seven stocks just getting into passing lanes. Really good at stripping drivers and cutters down low right around the basket. Uh which is what you got to do when you obviously don’t have that that vertical size. Uh but just just a super feisty guard with good hands that can do a lot of damage. Raphael Stone has specifically come out and said this, but his development is super important to Houston’s short-term goals and their long-term goals. Stone came out and said and specifically said, “Reed is going to have to be really good for us. We’ve penciled him in for a big role.” Remember, we talked about the ball handling shortage for Houston right after the Kevin Durant trade. This was a team we talked about like this was a team that would have made sense for a guy like Tyus Jones in the same way that Taius Jones made no sense for Phoenix because Phoenix had a glut of ball handling and a deficit in like physical defense and rebounding. Taius Jones you experienced diminishing returns there, right? But in a context like Houston or Orlando who ended up signing Tyus Jones, there’s an absence of ball handling and refined offensive skill. you get to experience more of the upside from having Taius Jones on your team. But they didn’t sign Taius Jones. They’re allowing Reed Shepard the opportunity to fill this role. And I actually really like this approach from Raphael Stone of allowing Reed that runway cuz like Houston has a large margin for error in the regular season, right? Like they’re young, they’re athletic, they’re super deep. We already saw that exact same combination last year get the second seed in the Western Conference. So even if Reed Shepard comes in in that backup guard role and struggles and you know it it becomes abundantly clear during that time that they need to upgrade that position. It’s not like they’re going to slip way down in the standings and be in some predicament where the season is lost because they didn’t sign a backup guard. They’re so good in terms of their their uh their floor as a young athletic defense that they can afford to make some mistakes at that backup guard spot. And so what’s perfect is you have the best of both worlds. The best case scenario is he fills that role admirably and all of a sudden you got yourself a great basketball team and a young player that can fill that role for a long time and you’ve got yourself a great option there. But if he struggles, the worst case is he still gets lots of valuable reps that will help him become a better basketball player. And now you have a a knowledge and understanding of what your team needs. Okay, we tried Reed for 40 games as our backup guard. It’s not quite working, but I’m glad he got the reps. We have lots of draft compensation. We have salaries that we can package together to go find a a veteran, experienced, more steady, more consistent ball handler. They don’t need that guy in October. They’re not in that situation. They do need that guy for the playoffs. Why? Might as well see if Reed can do it. And if not, you can kind of pivot from there. there. But I want to I want to zoom in on Houston for a minute because they are rightfully being penciled in as one of the top three teams in the Western Conference. I think that’s clear. If you look at the West, to me, it’s you know, you have Denver Houston and Oklahoma City in that top tier in some order. And then I think there’s a little drop off and then you run into that second tier in the West. This is where you’re getting the Clippers, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Los Angeles Lakers. We’ll see if a team like San Antonio can get into that mix this year. We’ll see if a team like uh Memphis can bounce back this year. There’s a lot of different potential teams in that tier. I think that’s more or less that middle tier is going to be Clippers, Lakers, and and, uh, uh, Timberwolves, right? And so, uh, when we look at that group in the West, we kind of know what most of these teams are. We know what the Clippers are going to be. We they got healthy to the postseason last year and ended up not being enough to beat Denver. We more or less know what the Lakers are going to be. We got a good look at that last year. Denver obviously upgraded a starting position and added depth, but they’re more or less the same, you know, continuous group that’s been playing for the last several years. Oklahoma City, we just covered in depth winning the title. So, we know a lot about what those teams are. With Houston, they kind of have a wide range of potential outcomes because they’re a fundamentally different basketball team with Kevin Durant. They’re going to play a different style on offense. This is a team that ran a lot of their down thestretch go-to action when things got tough in the playoffs last year was that inverted ball screen with Shangon at the top of the key. Fred Van Vleet would set the screen, he’d slip out of it and they would just play that twoman game at the top of the key. And it worked a little bit, but eventually they got to a point where Gary Payton and Draymond Green just refused to allow the switch and they stayed attached and Draymond was able to get the stops he needed to get on Alburn Shangon and they ended up losing. Right. Kevin Durant’s going to come in and just add a very different action that they’re going to run in those situations and give them a lot more variety that they can go to in those spots. On the defensive end, I’m a huge believer in Amen Thompson. I think he’s one of the best defensive prospects to ever grace the league, but he doesn’t have that like big frame that Dylan Brooks had. And Dylan Brooks gave them a great option for some of the bigger forwards in the Western Conference. Guys like LeBron, Luca Donuch, Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Julius Randall. a bunch of those types of dudes that Amen Thompson might be too small for, right? So, they’re a different team in that sense, but at the same time, they never really had a rim protecting presence before Kevin Durant. And like, if we look back, the last time Kevin Durant played on, you know, a championship quality team going back to Golden State, he functioned a lot as a backend rim protector for them. We’ve talked a lot about this concept with Shangon. When you have guy bigs like Shangon and you can’t protect the rim, you run into these tough situations where you’re either running like a deeper drop coverage with him and you’re getting picked apart in the mid-range or the guy’s getting downhill and Shangon’s not protecting the rim or you bring Shangon out to the level and he’s attacking the ball but now you’re giving up these four threes and you don’t have any rim protecting presence on the back line and that can cause problems, right? Kevin Durant gives you a solution to that problem, which is you can now bring Shangon up to the level to be aggressive on the ball handler knowing that you have a rangy long athlete on the backside that can cover ground both at the rim and out to the perimeter. Kevin Ran also has switchability to get out onto perimeter players, right? So, they’re a very different defense and a very different offense than they were last year. So, as we look, we know what Oklahoma City is. They’re this elite turnover forcing offense that can get out in transition. And then on offense, we know that they’re going to lean a lot on Shay Gilus Alexander dribble penetration, right? Denver, we know what Denver is. They’re probably the most reliable playoff in the NBA right now. But you add to it, they they have a very smart schematic approach on defense and they have a lot of high IQ defenders. And so they actually defend better than you would expect for a team that puts weak regular season defensive metrics up. And that doesn’t necessarily have a ton of highle defensive personnel, but they’re just really smart. They’re always in the right spots. They actually got more stops against Oklahoma City than everybody this last playoff run other than Indiana. And even then, it was influenced a lot by that game six where Indiana really strangled Oklahoma City. So like we know what Denver is with Houston. I want to be clear, Kevin Durant doesn’t come in and just turn them into an elite, welloiled machine on offense. It’s not that easy. It’s it offense takes continuity. And that that team still has a deficit of ball handling. That team still has a deficit of shooting even with Dorian Finny Smith. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be like just smooth sailing on offense. I think it’s going to be tougher. I think they’re gonna have to figure out ways to use Kevin Durant. I think they’re going to have to lean into more what Kevin Durant was in Brooklyn, which was more of like a high pick and roll ball handler rather than like an offball scorer playing off the catch more like he did in Phoenix. Like if you guys remember, he was super high volume in pick and roll in Brooklyn. And he had a year there, I think it was 2021, but he had a year there where Kevin Durant ball screen, including passes, was over a 120 offensive rating because he was just consistently drawing that second defender. He’s so tall. he can see over the top and easily drop it over the top to the roll man. And then they were playing four on three out of it with great spacing. And because James Harden was on that team and Kyrie Irving was on that team, they just had a lot of offensive skill off the ball. Now again, it will be a little more clunky with Houston, it’s a lot of young raw athletes, but I think I like the idea of using Amen Thompson in the short role playing off of Kevin Durant coming out of high ball screens. Shangon too is a guy that can score in the middle of the floor and playmake out of the middle of the floor. I like giving him more opportunities there off of Kevin Durant as a ball handler. Their ceiling on offense is going to be a work in progress. And it may be something that they don’t achieve until close to the playoffs or potentially even in the playoffs or if they get beat. If someone asked me how does Houston like Houston loses in the playoffs this year, how does it happen? I think it actually happens because their offense bogs down, right? But how can they separate themselves from Denver? How can they separate themselves from Oklahoma City? It’s the defensive end of the floor. if they can get to that point where KD has a throwback, you know, all defense type of season like he did in 2017 with Golden State where he’s protecting the rim, he’s doing defensive rebounding, he’s doing all that stuff on the backline and they have that depth of perimeter defense talent that they have. That’s where they have some upside. And so for me, I look at Houston as more the same kind of like defensive juggernaut that they were last year. Kevin Durant if he can just provide a little more advantage creation, rescue possessions, like three, four seconds on the shot clock, he’s just a way better option than anybody Houston had last year. Clutch situations. No more Fred Van Vleet, Alpurn Shangon, two-man game. A little bit more of Kevin Durant, Fred Van Vleet, two-man game. Kevin Durant, Alpurn Shangon, two-man game. I think that’s just a more reliable action there. It’s like dragging teams down into the mud, getting into close games, and then in those close games just executing better because you have Kevin Durant on the team. But I would argue out of all these teams in the West, they are the team that has the widest range of possible outcomes because they are fundamentally different on both ends of the floor with KD. We’re going to be tracking it non-stop throughout the year. It’s going to be a team we cover very closely this year, but I’m very, very excited to watch Kevin Durant and Houston Rockets play basketball. All right, guys. That is all we have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting us and supporting the show. Shout out again to the guys at SiriusXM for taking care of us here at the win. We will see you guys next week.

Jason discusses Reed Sheppard’s impressive summer league performance for the Houston Rockets and why his offensive skillset will be so important for the team even after they’ve acquired Kevin Durant.

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