Most teams don't a have single young guy as promising as the Rockets' cache of Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason, Amen Thompson, Cam Whitmore and Reed Sheppard.
After trading away James Harden in January 2021, the Houston Rockets were largely plagued by a problem not uncommon amongst bad teams: they didn’t have good players. Across three seasons from 2020 to 2023, the Rockets won a grand total of 59 games. Houston was a wasteland, where has-beens glumly cashed their final checks alongside wannabes.
When Sengun and Green shared the court last season, the Rockets posted a slightly negative net rating and were outscored by 0.6 points per 100 possessions. Conversely, whenever Sengun and Green were separated, the Rockets had a positive one. To wit, once Sengun got hurt, Houston ripped off a ten-game winning streak, fueled by Green’s 31.8 points per game over that stretch.
More, Sheppard has showcased an expansiveness that he never got to demonstrate at Kentucky. During his year in college, he was forced to dim his sparkle by necessity; Kentucky was so loaded with guards that there wasn’t room for Sheppard in the starting lineup. Within this circumscribed context, Sheppard thrived so comprehensively, it became hard to envision him doing anything else. He was such a good shooter that it felt counterproductive to ask anybody else to provide spacing.
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