Reply With Quote
Sheppard's career arc hasn't been determined yet. He's getting 12 minutes a game on a deep team with playoff aspirations. I think at this point in the season though, it is a good bet that Castle will have the better career. A couple of factors play into this -
1. Castle's shown the confidence and willingness to launch 3s at 1.5x the rate that he did in college - I'm not seeing the hesitation as a pro that I did when he was at UConn. A big part of 3 point projection relies on a player's confidence taking 3s in college, this significantly affects his shooting projection. If you bump his college 3point rate up, you're getting shooting comps like Anthony Edwards or Tyrese Maxey as opposed to MKG.
2. Conversely, Reed's hesitation and tendency to defer is really biting him as a rookie - there is definitely something to the assertion that he's overthinking his efficiency and that's negatively affecting his play. It's leading to a lot of passing when he should be shooting, and I think it's affecting his confidence. The difference in performance between Sheppard and McCain right now really illustrates the importance of mentality and confidence as it pertains to success in the league. I had McCain and Sheppard closer together than virtually anyone on this board, but it looks like I still got it somewhat wrong.
3. This goes back to summer league, but Castle's really demonstrated a lot of lead guard tendencies that were depressed while he was at UConn. I expected him to become a Smart/Suggs level initiator, but he's shown chops way above and beyond that. I do wonder if maybe we should be looking at high school tape more for a lot of these freshmen who have very limited college tape or who play a completely different role in college compared to high school.
Ultimately, I can't be too sad about my call of Sheppard over Castle at the time. I assumed Castle was the higher ceiling prospect and had him in his own tier at #2, but I'm happy to see that he's way outperformed my expectations for him thus far. We'll see what Sheppard looks like in a few years, but I'm more than happy to be wrong about this and have the Spurs end up with a stud rather than have it the other way around.
As an aside, I think the 2023 draft was actually very underrated as it pertains to the front office's evaluation. Wemby was an obvious draft pick, but there were a couple of factors where the front office either did their evaluations correctly or avoided potential landmines that would have either set the team back immensely or at least somewhat.
1. A lot of people on this board were calling for a trade of a future draft asset to move back into the lottery to grab either Anthony Black or Cason Wallace to pair with Wemby. While both guys have turned out to be promising players, it probably would have cost the Spurs the 2024 pick and most would probably prefer Castle to either of those two guys.
2. I think I even saw one or two posters calling for the Spurs to trade future draft assets to pair Scoot with Wemby. As of today, Scoot Henderson is rated as a bottom 5 player by EPM. He might still become a good player in time, but I think it's unlikely he becomes a star in the future. Trading for him probably would have cost the Spurs Castle and at least 1-2 future unprotected draft picks as well, which would have been a disaster of epic proportions.
3. Before the lottery, I think Timvp had an article saying that the front office actually preferred Amen Thompson over both Scoot and Brandon Miller if they did not win the Wemby sweepstakes. It ended up being a moot point since we got Wemby, but Amen is probably Houston's most untradeable player right now and is already an elite role player. I don't think that was a popular opinion at the time, but in retrospect it was probably the correct read on prospect quality.
All this to say, even though the front office could have drafted better players in prior years, I think they probably deserve more credit from a talent evaluation standpoint than they probably get.
