With the regular season drawing to a close and the Houston Rockets in search of consistency on offense, second-year guard Reed Sheppard was inserted into the starting lineup against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday in the first game of a back-to-back set that will cap a Rockets five-game homestand.
Sheppard tallied 14 points, four 3-pointers and four assists in the Rockets’ 117-95 victory. It marked his 11th start of the season, and Sheppard will remain in the starting lineup for the foreseeable future, including on Saturday night, when the Rockets (42-27) host the Miami Heat (38-32).
While Sheppard has enjoyed a moderate uptick in production since the All-Star break, averaging 15.8 points and 3.9 assists a game compared with 12.7 and 3.0, respectively, his promotion was tied in part to the extended slump fourth-year forward Tari Eason labored through before his inevitable demotion.
Eason started 32 of 48 games before returning to a reserve role against the Hawks. In 31 games before the All-Star break, he averaged 12.2 points while shooting a robust 46% from behind the 3-point line. His shooting percentage has plummeted in the second half, particularly in March, with Eason having missed 28 of 31 3-point attempts before going 1-for-3 against Atlanta.
Eason clearly lost confidence in his shot. Sheppard provided Rockets coach Ime Udoka a viable alternative in the near term. Incidentally, Eason has a better true shooting percentage as a reserve (60.9) than as a starter (47.7), albeit in nearly 600 fewer minutes.
Eason had 10 points on 3-for-9 shooting and 10 rebounds in 24 minutes off the bench on Friday.
“As I’ve done throughout the year, I’ll tinker with a few different things,” Udoka said. “Obviously, Reed has taken a nice jump lately, but I wanted to have more spacers out there, some shooting, and have different guys that can handle and do some things. I wanted to look at that.
“Tari is struggling, obviously, but it’s not necessarily that. He’s still doing the things we want to do defensively. It was good to see him make some shots, but just put him back in his role off the bench, relax a bit, and take a look at Reed. Get a last look at something before the playoffs.”
The Rockets already have secured a postseason berth and are in fourth place in the Western Conference.
The Heat, after winning nine of 11 games coming out of the All-Star break, suffered their third consecutive loss with a 134-126 home setback to the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday. Miami is battling for sixth place and a guaranteed playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers, like the Heat, are 38-32, a half-game behind the sixth-place Orlando Magic (38-31).
Like the Rockets, Miami used a new starting lineup against the Lakers, one unlike any used in the previous 69 games. Norman Powell scored 20 points while coming off the bench for the second time this season, with Simone Fontecchio making only his sixth start.
“To be honest, we feel good about where we are as a group with our identity,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We know how we want to play. I think that’s the most important thing. Who starts — you figure out the rotation from there.
“Everybody that’s in the rotation right now has consistently been in the rotation. How we want to play has been consistent all year. That’s the harder thing to accomplish.”
