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Booker was nothing before Chris Paul, is nothing after Chris Paul.
Seeing as the Suns are now down 16 to the Clippers, they have a tough schedule coming up and that pick could be in the top 8. Im fine if they don’t want to give up Booker. They can continue to implode. But the Rox will go hunting for a star at that position or at SF.
Booker was nothing before Chris Paul, is nothing after Chris Paul.
His role in the Olympics was awesome, probably had the best tourny after Lebron for Team USA. Suns should try to build a role for him in that mold with a bit more shooting/finishing plays rather than trying to make him Luka lite.
Maybe it was just me but I remembered him being inefficient in that series and it was actually Chris Paul who got the suns going on offence. Will have to look it up.
In fact, my opinion of him being an empty calories guy is because of that series, or at least mainly because of it.
Sheppard would be awesome on this team. Wemby gets guys like him open looks. Don't get me wrong, Castle does everything great except his outside shooting is a work in process. But I have no doubt that if Reed were on this team, he'd be in the rookie of the year conversation and would have spent zero time in the G-League. And I'd also probably bet the Spurs would have taken Reed over Castle. That said, I love Castle so I'm glad things worked out as they did.
I wouldn't go that far (roty race), but ive always thought he'd be a great fit next to Castle in the back court.
Reed would have gotten less minutes w/ the Spurs than Castle did. Castle has found time playing the 2 as well as the 3 for many of his minutes. Pop does love his undersized shooters (probalby would have seen a lot of Paul/Sheppard minutes), but Castle's versatility has gotten him on the floor in ways sheppard wouldnt have
i also unapologetically had Sheppard above Castle on my board. but i also viewed Sheppard as a point guard and Castle as a wing. with Paul and now Fox, sheppard's impact would never have been as much as castle's has been here
You being sarcastic? Only thing you got right was that Brian Wrong would have picked Reed over Castle.
Right. Is that why we had an embedded scout at UConn all season?
CP3 was great until like Game 4 where he fell apart IIRC. Thought he might have been injured or something because he was truly awful in that game, which Booker managed to keep Phoenix in until the end with like 41 points.
Sheppard doesn't have the speed or stature to be a good defender. He also doesn't really create much on offense. You'd be seeing a guy stuck in the wing or the corner and who constantly gets burned or bumped to pieces by even moderate sized guards driving on him.
Oh I think Reed can be an adequate defender in the NBA. Not Castle, but he can be good. He's a good ball handler, has some good passing instincts, and he can shoot really well. What is the biggest weakness on our roster? Three point shooting. He would be getting 25 minutes a game at least on our roster, just like Castle. And he would get great looks playing with Paul and Wemby. Again, I'm not saying I prefer him over Castle, but it can't be overstated the difference between going to a team, like the Spurs, who would find him minutes, and a team, like the Rockets, loaded at his position. If he got consistent minutes in the NBA, he'd be in the rookie of the year conversation, I stand by that. He's a good player. He just went a team that doesn't really need him because they got good players to play in front of him.
Though I would concede that after the Fox trade, it would be harder for him to get minutes because I still think he has to make his mark as a PG in this league and Castle can really play 3 positions.
He is going to be hunted mercilessly. He doesn't even play enough right now to really be on opponents scouting reports but once he is it will get ugly. Shai casually put 20 points on him in the 1st quarter the other night when Reed started, granted that is Shai. I do agree with the theory that he could be a good steals guy and has solid hands defensively. I just think in terms of getting switched onto bigger/longer players it will get ugly and once the film is out there every team will attack that. That is probably why Ime has played Reed so sparingly.
Oh you mean Shai, the best scorer in the league this year put up 20 points on him? Shai can score on anyone in the league. Switches will be a problem for Fox. Switches are a problem for every team in the league. Switches are less of a problem for the Spurs because they have Wemby.
I looked it up, Booker had back to back 40 point games (42 in Game 4, 40 in Game 5), both losses. I recalled thinking that his big games don't do anything, which probably wasn't fair to him, but oh well.
In the 6 games, he had +/- of +18, +10, -13, 0, +12 and -15, so he wasn't as bad as I remembered, but when I watched the game, I just thought his good games don't lead the team anywhere, it was CP who does that work and when CP3 sat, the team was rudderless. For the series, he had an ORtg of 104 (?!!?!) and DRtg of 121, TS% of only 53.8%, and a very high usage rate of 33.5%.
Honestly, I likely over-exaggerated his 2nd banananess in my mind, but I won't classify him as one of those players who stepped up or clearly led the team when the team needed him the most.
Guess my biggest memory of the series was Game 4 where CP3 looked injured or something, as he was playing so bad. I remember him being a monster in the early series though. But yeah I didn't remember Booker being too memorable in the clinching game.
I’m glad the Rockets ended up agreeing with me and chose Reed over Castle. I was a fool to doubt him in the summer. Luckily I changed my view on him my first time seeing him live in the preseason.
Also, I always thought Booker was the Western Conference version of Beal. A guy who takes all the shots, gets you 25 a game, plays zero defense, makes nobody else on their team better and is good enough to trick teams into thinking they are players to lift a franchise. That’s why I thought it was hilarious when the Suns actually traded for Beal. I was like why don’t want two Bradley Beals?
If I were the Suns I would trade Booker to the Rockets for all their picks back and pick swaps from Houston. And then trade Durant to the Lakers for 2 FRPs. Franchise would be way better off that way
Yea, in a quarter.
Fox will of course have his issues at times, but the athletic difference between Sheppard and Fox is massive. Reed also has significantly shorter wingspan and standing reach...rough comp. Fox physically looks like he belongs on an NBA court, Sheppard looks like the 14 year old that snuck into the gym with grown men playing pickup ball.
He might improve and definitely will, really. But I have to push back: he's not a good ball-handler. He does well if he can do that toy car, pull back ten feet and start with a head of steam thing, but he's not great. Will get better. On defense, his hands are excellent. He can't stay in front of a lot of players and dies on screens, things that happened even in college. Like Malaki Branham dies-on-screens bad. The real issue is that nearly everyone in the league, even guards, towers over him. If he has to put a body on anybody he just can't, so gets ragdolled when driven on. That's were his hands save him on drives sometimes, but otherwise he's hopeless there.
He needs a lot of favorable conditions to get his shot off.
In fairness, he got his shot off well against one of the best defensive teams in the NBA. I don't know his ceiling. That's a wait and see. But the idea that he is too small to play in the NBA is just silly. There are plenty of bad defenders in the NBA that get "hunted" and they still do fine. Nash was a horrible defender. So was Tony Parker. Both are HOF players and Nash was an MVP. Trae Young can't defend dirt and he leads the league in assists and is single-handedly screwing up our 2nd lottery pick. The scouting report on Reed is that he is a pretty good defender. I think he'll be fine. I mean Payton Pritchard is averaging 13 points a game and getting his shot off and doing just fine with the Celtics and he doesn't have the same skills that Reed has. I'm sure Reed will be just fine.
My problem with Sheppard isn't just that he's small and scrawny, it's that he also has no quickness on defense. I consistently called Dillingham a better potential defender when I watched them in college. Dillingham is a terrible defender, but he has quickness, Sheppard is in mud. So not only can he not body a player trying to get to the rim, he gets blown by and a screen can just destroy him.
During their marvelous upset against Oakland in the first round last year, they were getting destroyed by this aging dentist-looking dork named Gohlke who was raining these movement threes all over them. Dillingham got a lot of flak for that game, but was actually trying to bring them back -- and hit a bomb cutting it to like four or something with about a minute left to go, then never saw the ball again.
Sheppard was nowhere to be seen that game. But what stood out to me was that he had no prayer with Gohlke, who looked like the Incredible Hulk next to him. Couldn't keep up with him at all, and this was no athlete. Dillingham could keep up with him, and did, to an extent, because he could get around screens and chase him. Now, Dillingham still did bizarre . My favorite was that he doubled the post off of Gohlke, who was wrecking them, leaving him open for a three point bomb. Just stupid stuff. But I still think Dillingham has a shot at being overall better if he learns what defense is.
That said, Sheppard does have absolutely fantastic hands. And he does understand defensive concepts so is pretty much in the right places for rotations and rebounds.
And Reed has the ability to turn in these shockingly phenomenal games. One was against Mississippi State (I think) last year. Another was one of the Summer League games. That OKC game looked like one of them. (Tbh, watching a bit, it felt like the Thunder were mailing it in against an undermanned/injured Rockets team and were never threatened.)
But those games where Sheppard detonates and fills up the stat sheet everywhere. In college it happened like twice. That MS St game, some people put him immediately as their top pick because of it. If he's able to figure out how to do that more often, that's one thing.
Time will tell. But all these things have been said about great players. Nash, a two time league MVP started his career as a third string point guard behind KJ and Jason Kidd. He was slow but a good passer and shooter. He was short and couldn’t guard anyone. And he became a two time league MVP. But if you just went by his measurements, he shouldn’t even have been in the league according to these arguments.
this is why my evaluation of sheppard came down to whether i believed he was going to be a slightly undersized point guard or a woefully undersized shooting guard
as a point guard, the size issue isnt quite as big a deal, and i figured his knack for defensive playmaking and his active hands would make him good enough at that end while providing efficient offense on the other end
as a shooting guard, i was out on him
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