National reporter says quiet part out loud about Rockets' need for Reed Sheppard

As Reed Sheppard enters his second season in the NBA, the Houston Rockets, with one of the deepest rotations in the league, ironically need the 21-year-old guard to step up in order to plug a major hole in their offense.

According to Kevin O'Connor, an NBA Analyst for Yahoo Sports, Sheppard's ability to space the floor and create shots will be something the Rockets are sorely lacking this season, and, beyond veteran guard Fred VanVleet, Sheppard is the one who must take on that role.

While expectations for Sheppard, who was the third overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, have been tempered thus far as a result of Houston's mass of young talent, the timeline has now accelerated with the acquisition of Kevin Durant, and Sheppard must take a leap quickly if he is going to make an impact on this team.

The Rockets are counting on Reed Sheppard to take as second-year leap

As Sheppard was entering the draft and coming out of his lone season at Kentucky, teams across the board knew that they potentially had a generational shooter in front of them. Through 33 games, mostly off the bench, in his Freshman season at Kentucky, he shot an absurd 52.1% from 3-point range on 4.4 attempts per game.

In his rookie season at the NBA level, however, this game struggled to translate. While Sheppard's role was limited by the depth of the backcourt, he only managed to shoot 33.8% from beyond the arc over the course of the season.

Now, according to O'Connor, Sheppard needs to begin to sink those shots and allow the rest of his game to shine through as a result: "To me it's very, very important that Reed Sheppard figures it out: that he becomes a guy in this rotation. [In part] because of his 3-point shooting... but also because he can create. He can be a guy in pick-and-roll who can hit a pull-up three if the defense goes under the screen..."

Outside of new acquisitions Durant and Dorian Finney-Smith, the Rockets are sorely lacking outside shooting across their roster, and, apart from VanVleet, they have no dependable ball-handler in their backcourt. Many who watched Sheppard in college know that he is capable of being both of these things at a level necessary to lead the bench unit, and much of the team's completeness as a whole will depend on his ability to at least trend toward rotational viability in these areas this season.

With as much effort as the team has put into constructing a deep and versatile roster, the thought of a major aspect of their offense resting on a second-year guard is quite scary. Yet, if Sheppard can step into the role O'Connor has laid out for him this season, he could be a major difference-maker for this roster.