3 reasons why the Houston Rockets are a great fit for Kentucky guard Reed Sheppard
By Alec Lasley
2. Flexibility To Play Both On And Off The Ball
You can never have enough guards, shooters or ball handlers on your roster and Sheppard provides all of that and more to a team that needs some flexibility on the floor.
While shooting is what he does best, Sheppard can provide quality minutes as a main ball handler. He averaged 4.5 assists last year at Kentucky and had an assist rate of 24.1 percent that was in the top-10 of the SEC.
While he can make plays for his teammates in ball handling sets, he is also effective creating for himself in those situations. Sheppard ranked in the 90th percentile in off the dribble shooting and 91st in ball screen scoring.
He can get to the rim, has a lethal pull up game and can obviously burn defenders if they go under screens.
With Jalen Green and Fred VanVleet demanding a lot of attention, this can allow either to play more off the ball in certain sets and let Sheppard orchestrate the offense.
Sheppard is not going to be a long-term 30+ minute per game guy at the point guard position, but he has all of the tools to be a guy to provide a lot of relief for the other ball handlers on the roster and allow them to be scorers instead of passers.