Rockets' Reed Sheppard Gives Simple Answer for Stellar Season-Long Play

Prior to the start of the 2025-26 NBA season, we'd heard a good bit about the Houston Rockets' plans to give second-year guard Reed Sheppard a bigger role.

Rightfully so, as the team used the third pick in the draft to nab him. That's a major investment, even if you think the draft class was weak.

As a side note, Stephon Castle was not the pick for Houston there. There are duplicate skillets and player profiles between him and Amen Thompson. Neither are shooters and you can't have two non-shooters in the same backcourt. Especially since you also have another non-shooter in Alperen Sengun in the starting five. Okay, now back to Reed Sheppard.

His playing time has been sporadic, especially as it pertains to his minutes in the fourth quarter. Some games, he plays just the first handful of minutes in the quarter.

Other games, he doesn't play in the fourth quarter at all. His impact is felt, even when his shots aren't falling.

But dating back to the All-Star break, his shots have been falling in a major way. The second year guard and Kentucky product is shooting 44.2% from deep on 7.8 attempts since the break, which spans 11 games for the Rockets.

Reed Sheppard before and after the All-Star break:

BEFORE AFTER
12.7 PPG 17.0
42.6 FG% 45.6
38.7 3P% 44.4
3.0 AST 4.4

The DMs fixed the Rockets pic.twitter.com/TfSQ9WVGLe
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He's also made 45% of his shots from the field and 84.6% of his free throw attempts from the charity stripe, while averaging 15 points per contest, while mostly being used as a reserve, as Sheppard has played 26.8 minutes per contest since the All-Star break, as of this writing.

Teams make it a point of emphasis to run him off the 3-point line. Sheppard was asked by Rockets sideline reporter Vanessa Richardson to explain the secret to his sauce of late (well, actually all season) and gave a rather simple response.

"Just confidence, just confidence," Sheppard said. "I mean, I've gotta give alot of credit to my teammates. I'm getting alot of catch-and-shoot threes from them. So just, them looking for me and then shooting that thing with confidence."

Sheppard was the key to the Rockets' 18-point comeback victory against the Orlando Magic. He scored 17 points in the second half and went 5-of-7 from the outside.

Sheppard also possesses unrelated playmaking chops. We've seen him make skip passes, and just timely, on-point passes overall.

Sheppard has drawn the start in Jabari Smith Jr.'s absence of late and will be heavily relied upon in the postseason.