SIXTH MAN? Rockets Reed Sheppard SNUBBED From Starting Role | Is Ime Udoka Making A MISTAKE?

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Is Reed Shepard just a sixth man in Ene Odoca's eyes for this Houston Rockets team?

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locked on Rockets on today's show, where are we talking about a recent interview that

Ene Odoca conducted on the Matt Thomas show just a few days ago, ahead of the Rockets Blazers

game actually where this was kind of at the height of the Reed Sanity, if you will, talking

about Reed, possibly taking over starting spot and his role in this Rockets team and all

of this.

And this interview was pretty insightful into Ene's view on Reed Shepherd, at least at

this point.

And it sheds some light on at least how he views Reed's role on this Rockets team for better

or for worse.

Unfortunately, let's go ahead and run that clip back right now and then we'll talk about

some of the things that Ene had to say.

Today, you are a smart man for avoiding social media, your fan base, including people that

call this show, having frankly fixated on why Reed does not start.

And my philosophy has been, and it's always been this way no matter who the player is,

regardless of its reader, somebody else.

It's about who finishes is compared to who necessarily starts.

But my number one argument has been, I love a six man.

I think six men scoring 15, 17 points game, which Reed has now become accustomed to,

is needed.

And you just don't have the length of your bench with the injuries that you had even

before the start of the season.

So when you consistently hear that, and you get still questioned about it on occasion,

what is your general response to that?

Yeah, I mean, people see the scoring in the highlight plays and then kind of get fixated

with that.

But there's a balance to a team and whether you're looking at it from a defensive standpoint

with the starting lineup or offensive standpoint, you know, you lose certain things with

Fred being out and Dylan being gone.

And so we want to replace that and maintain your identity as far as that.

And then to your point, Fred being gone this year and our two main handlers being out

there together at the start of the game, I'm in and Reed is easier to say to those guys.

But definitely as consideration for us, and like I said, he started at times.

But I'll take it to a guy like my manager, Noble, who was obviously who I'd been around

and played with coach and whether it's Jamal Crawford, Lou Williams, all those guys

are valuable for that specific reason and Reed is fine with whatever.

And so if Reed was as concerned as the rest of the world, I don't think he'd be where

he's at right now.

And so we'll look at everything and to your point, as always, since I've been here, I think

whoever finishes and who's playing well is going to be in there at the end.

And that's honestly more important to us.

Okay.

All right.

So a decent bit to unpack here.

I'm going to tackle a couple of things and then we'll, all right, first things first.

The idea that like it doesn't matter who starts, it matters who finishes is great in theory,

like sure, I understand that and that that logic can be applied, you know, across a variety

of different supports, right?

Problem is, and we've seen this and we've talked about this a lot recently.

The issue is if you don't start and again, the cognitive dissonance here is kind of like

impressive, just because we went through this exact same issue last season with Amin Thompson.

At some point, when a player is so impactful, when a player is making that much of a difference

to a team, to where you need to run them for 30, 35 plus minutes a game in order to really

maximize their ability to help the team, it's really, really hard to do that and appropriately

balance their minutes when they're not starting because again, if what happens is Reed Shepard

checks in the game with, you know, five minutes, four minutes left in the first quarter

and then he's so impactful that he may cannot take him out of the game, then he winds up

playing 15, 16, 17, 18 straight minutes in a half, which is not good for anybody.

It's not good for Reed Shepard, a shooter to be playing on dead legs, right?

That takes away one of his arguably his best skill, which is spacing the floor and knocking

down the three ball at an elite level.

And so like that's argument number one is this idea of it doesn't matter who starts, it

matters who finishes.

Well, it kind of does matter who starts because that's how you set the table properly to

get substitution patterns, rotations, different lineups, all this stuff, right?

The other element of the idea talking about, okay, well, it doesn't matter, it matters

who finishes.

Well, yeah, but Reed Shepard hasn't been trusted to finish games until recently.

And the only reason he's been trusted to finish games recently is because of the injuries.

And so that still leads us back to the argument where this rocket's team still hasn't truly

empowered Reed Shepard to the point where they could play a stretch of games, just not

even just five games, 10 games, a small sample size of games where they test him out in the

starting lineup with a healthy group.

Because again, every single game that Reed Shepard has started for this rocket's team,

where they are now, what is it now, eight and two, seven and two, something like that.

Every single game that Reed Shepard has started for this rocket's team has been as a direct

result of somebody else being injured.

So the team isn't even at full strength when Reed Shepard is starting in these games.

And so you're not even giving like a, I guess a full honest effort in what it would look

like if the approach were to change to include Reed Shepard in the starting lineup.

Now, one area that I do want to highlight here, and there's still more that I want to

address from what Emei had to say in his little interview about Reed Shepard, I do think

one relevant point that was not brought up at all in this interview.

And it's something that we're going to spend some time on in a future show for sure.

Diving into some of the numbers is the idea of, can you actually man it?

Can you actually start Reed Shepard in Alperinch and Goon?

Can those two coexist on the floor with one another given their specific defensive limitations?

That is a significant, that is actually the question of whether or not Reed Shepard in Alperinch

and Goon coexist because we saw earlier in the season that Emei basically refused to play

either of them together.

And we were left here kind of scratching our heads wondering why Alperinch and Goon is

the starting big.

He needs reps with Reed Shepard and Frank Van Leet's gone for the year.

Like he's the one point guard on the team that can actually run pick an outside of J.D.

Davidson that can run pick and roll and provide the rockets with that layer that they're

missing, that added dynamic offensively, that they've sorely been missing all season.

We posited this earlier in the season two, but okay, so it looks like Emei doesn't want

to play them together because of the defensive limitations of those two guys on the floor.

We're going to dive into the numbers on that pairing moving forward because the numbers

are fairly surprising when you go look at some of the offensive and defensive numbers

when Reed and Alperinch share the floor versus when they don't share the floor, when one

of them's out there, when both of them are out there, all that stuff.

I think there may be a valid argument there from a defensive perspective, but we're going

to have to touch base on that in a future episode.

I do want to get tackled more of the comments that Emei Odoca shared in this interview talking

about Reed Shepard's role and whatnot and kind of his perception of him as I guess just

a sixth man, which is a little concerning.

We're going to get there in just one moment.

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All right.

Now, one of the things early in the clip that Emeo Doka had to share when it went asked

about the read shepherd situation, right, is that, you know, he talked about people

seeing the scoring, the highlight plays and he says, quote, there's a balance to a team.

And it's funny because of Emeo's bias towards playing defensive minded players, right, and

leaning that direction, because it doesn't really feel like the team has great balance,

right?

Unfortunately, like this is kind of the issue with this Rockets team identity is that there

isn't a balance to the team, right?

It's very clearly tilted towards defense above all else.

There's a reason that the starting lineup, Emeo settled on, settled on what he settled

on, you know, for this season, right?

First, it was Joshua Kogi now it's Tarii's from the starting lineup.

There's a reason we haven't seen read shepherd thrown into the starting lineup, because

even if there are supposed defensive concerns with read shepherd and Alper engine gun,

which I'm not even, they're not even that they're like fake or anything.

There are defensive concerns with those two, right?

I think that a different coach, a different coaching staff might be able to look at a duo

of read shepherd and Alper engine gun or even better, a trio of read shepherd Alper

engine gun and Kevin Durant, as well as looking at the other three spots on the floor that

aren't read or Alper, right?

And if you have KD and any two of Emeen, Jabari, Tari, right?

Three plus level defenders, three high level defenders, plus read and Alper who try at least

defensively, right?

And as long as you've got the right motivation and maybe, you know, some scheming to help

them a little bit on the defensive side, then conceivably you could maybe, maybe you

could produce more on the offensive end than what you give up defensively, right?

Talking again about net positive outcomes, where if a starting lineup of read shepherd,

Kevin Durant, Alper engine gun, plus two of the other guys to two high level defenders

can get you say 125, 130 points of game because offensively it just fits and all the pieces

work significantly better, but maybe you're giving up 115 a game.

You're still plus 15 like plus 10 plus 15.

That's great.

And net positive outcome, but again, it doesn't feel like the team really has, it doesn't

feel like the team has pivoted to the personnel that they have on hand.

And that's the kind of one of the next things that he says talks about, you know, losing Fred

and Dylan and maintaining your identity, I think it's important for any NBA head coach

to be able to actually coach the talent in front of you, right?

To be able to look at the pieces that you have, identify their strengths and weaknesses,

I look at the players that you have identify their strengths and weaknesses and then be

able to actually coach them and maximize their skill sets as opposed to trying to make

your players fit into some preconceived notion about how you want the team to play basketball

or how you feel basketball should be played.

That is letting your biases spill into the game because we've seen teams win all kinds

of ways, right?

All offense, no defense teams, we've seen all defense, no offense teams and we've seen

teams more so somewhere in the middle, right?

And it's, it's distinctly possible.

Like, hell, you can look at, there are two high level basketball teams right now that I

can point to as examples right now of teams that have big fives, legitimately centers that

are predominantly offensive focused and leave a little bit to be desired defensively as

well as point guards who are often viewed as defensive liabilities.

I got you two right now, the New York Knicks with Jalen Brunson and Karl Anthony Towns

and the Denver Nuggets with Jamal Murray and Nikola Yokech.

Now, Kat and Yokech are both a little bit bigger than Al P for sure so that, you know, leaves

Al P, you know, a little bit out out in the cold, right?

If he's, you know, a little bit undersized compared to those guys, they just occupy a little

bit more space down low than he does, they're also better shooters than Al P, right?

So it's not a, it's not a perfect one for one analog comparison, like, but the proof

is there that you can have a team built around high level offensive players and you put the

right defensive pieces around those guys, right?

McAle Bridges, OG N and OB, Josh Hart, Aaron Gordon, Christian Brown, I guess, Cam Johnson's

had a rough year.

Peyton Watson, whatever, like you put the right pieces around those duos and then suddenly

things can look really, really, really good.

So I don't know, some of these comments are alarming to say the least, right?

Because then he's, he starts talking about Reed as like a sixth man and, and, you know,

how, you know, man who worked in, you know, in San Antonio and all that except for the

fact that like San Antonio wasn't missing a point guard like San Antonio had Tony Parker

and they also had like all time great talented players.

They weren't at a talent deficit the way that this rocket team is.

Their piece is actually fit together.

And I don't know.

And then ultimately, right, the whole like Reed, Reed is fine with whatever.

Of course, he, it reads not going to complain.

Like these, these, this is fans looking at the production, like the product on the court

thinking there's got to be a better way, right?

Like Reed is going to, Reed is not like in the locker room moping or complaining that he's

not starting.

He'll be, he'll play whatever role he's given, right?

He's a second year player without any level of like, you know, experience or cache and

the league to be upset or disappointed, right?

He doesn't, he hasn't accomplished enough to have an ego about his role.

But the, the frustrating part is that his role should be expanded, right?

And we've seen it.

It is expanding a little bit.

I gave credit to Emay the other night in the loss against San Antonio, the fact that

at least the rockets, it looks like Emay might be experimenting with some of the substitution

patterns, right, about, you know, finding different ways to get Reed subbed into the game

even earlier so that he can actually get a rest and whatnot.

So at least that is a positive development, a, a small step in the right direction.

But it's still just, just wrap this whole thing up, right?

It's still just so perplexing because at the end of the day, you know, it feels like

the season more or less might be a wash due to injuries because of how the team was

constructed, because of how the team was built.

And the fact that like, they're still sitting on an open roster spot.

They still have that 15th slot wide open.

And they've made no effort to go sign anybody, do anything.

They didn't make any deals at the trade deadline.

They were one of only three teams to not make a single move at the trade deadline, right?

So like, what is the purpose of this season?

What is the goal of this season?

Because if the goal is to try and win at the highest level and still win, then why haven't

they filled that slot?

Why haven't they found somebody to reinforcements to help the squad, right?

All of the above any any of that, right?

And then on top of that, if, if the goal isn't to win at the highest level this season,

if the goal isn't to do everything possible to still have a deep playoff run and win

as many games as possible, then why not start reed shepherd and give him as many reps as

possible alongside Kevin Durant alongside Alperinching with it, get as much data as possible

to find out can these guys work together?

Can reed shepherd function alongside Alperinching Goon for extended stretches in the starting lineup

with the right pieces around them to offset their defensive limitations?

Who knows?

Because we don't see it for long enough stretches, right?

We see it in pockets here or there and we see it situationally due to injuries, but

the team has refused or email has refused to embrace it to this point.

And I think that's concerning.

I think that level of inflexibility and at times what feels like stubbornness from the

head coach is very concerning for the rockets moving forward.

And I've talked about this before, right?

I would hate to see this rocket's organization bend and cater and and make moves to fit

this very static inflexible image of how the team should play and should operate to fit

e-mails mold as opposed to incorporating talented players and finding ways to maximize their

skill sets and their abilities without this level of, I guess, rigidity about how the

game is supposed to be played or approached, et cetera.

So and that's a major concern, right?

Because at least for right now, e-mails under contract for the rest of the season and

for the next five years.

So that's a lot of control that he probably has and a lot of say so in the direction of

the organization.

So I'm curious your thoughts on what email Doca had to say in the interview question

asked about read Shepard, give me your thoughts in the YouTube comments, but as always, thanks

so much for watching.

Thanks so much for listening.

And we look forward to having you back right here at Lockdown Rockets, your daily podcast

home for everything.

Houston Rockets Vascular Basketball.

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