Second-year Rockets guard Reed Sheppard was reportedly made unavailable during Houston’s recent trade negotiations for Kevin Durant, and it seems to have given the 21-year-old a psychological boost heading into the NBA’s 2025 summer league.

Prior to Friday’s summer-league opener for the Rockets, Sheppard was asked about the trade whispers during an on-air conversation with ESPN insider Shams Charania.

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Via HoopsHype, that conversation went as follows:

Charania: You were a top pick last year. Your role ebbed and flowed, you had injury issues, but you were on a top-two seed, finding your place. Now you’re going to enter this year in a bigger role. This offseason, teams — including the Phoenix Suns, I was told — asked about you. You were made untouchable in those conversations. What do you feel when you hear that? What kind of motivation does it give you?

Sheppard: Yeah, I think it’s really cool. This is my first year dealing with all the offseason stuff, the trades, so it’s kind of crazy seeing it all go down. But like you said, hearing that stuff is pretty cool. It gives me a lot of confidence — just going into the gym, continuing to work on everything I’ve been working on this summer, getting better, and looking forward to the season.

It’s worth noting that while in a relatively small sample, Sheppard did shoot above 40% from 3-point range in a 21-game span from January 18 until the April 13 finale of the 2024-25 regular season.

The sample was limited in large part due to a thumb fracture on his shooting hand, which Charania alluded to. That cost the Kentucky product, who was drafted at No. 3 overall in the 2024 first round, most of the month of March.

Nonetheless, the second half of Sheppard’s rookie season did feature some clear confidence-building moments, and perhaps being held out of offseason trade discussions can provide more of that.

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This article originally appeared on Rockets Wire: Reed Sheppard gained confidence as Houston kept him out of trade talks