The Athletic’s Kelly Iko reports: “As the coaching staff (in Houston) ponders changes and improvements for next season, the role of guard Reed Sheppard has come to the forefront.”
Though he was the No. 3 overall draft pick in the 2024 first round, Reed Sheppard played only sparingly for the 2024-25 Houston Rockets.
Unlike most high picks, who are drafted by the NBA’s worst teams and have minimal competition for minutes, Sheppard joined a playoff-bound squad that was only selecting that high because of a draft choice they had previously acquired from the Brooklyn Nets.
But that doesn’t mean that the 20-year-old lacks a path forward with the Rockets. It just simply didn’t happen for the University of Kentucky product as a rookie. The expectation is for that to change in year two, The Athletic’s Kelly Iko writes:
As the coaching staff ponders changes and improvements for next season, the role of guard Reed Sheppard has come to the forefront. Last season’s No. 3 pick in the draft, is slated for a vastly expanded role, team sources said, citing Sheppard’s floor spacing and IQ as much-needed qualities for a Rockets team that struggled in the halfcourt. Sheppard is regarded within team circles as having an extremely high ceiling, which the coaching staff wants to tap into as soon as possible.
It’s worth noting that Sheppard began last season in Houston’s playing rotation. However, between defensive struggles at Sheppard’s small size and an early shooting slump, veteran Aaron Holiday increasingly took on those backup point-guard minutes behind Fred VanVleet.
Sheppard showed flashes in rare appearances late in the season, but it was far too late for a playoff-bound team to consider substantive changes to its rotation for meaningful games. So, it was largely understood that Sheppard’s next sustained chance wouldn’t come until 2025-26.
Defensively, young NBA players often struggle as rookies before making progress in their second and third seasons due to additional strength and experience. The hope is that will be the case for Sheppard. And if the 6-foot-2 guard becomes more playable defensively, that should allow his sample on offense to grow to a large enough size for his elite shooting talent (at least in terms of projections) to translate.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise if Sheppard plays at the NBA’s 2025 summer league in Las Vegas, but that might not tell much about his regular-season readiness, since he was already a standout at that developmental level in 2024. The bigger question is how Sheppard will hold up against his teammates in training camp and the preseason this fall, followed by regular-season games.
Should that go well, the hope is that Sheppard’s addition to the rotation can provide a significant offensive boost to a Houston team that ranked in the middle of the pack in most efficiency categories during the 2024-25 season (and often below that in half-court situations).