This Thanksgiving, the Rockets are thankful for Reed Sheppard

Relative to their expected formula from the 2025 offseason, the Rockets were missing five rotation players in Wednesday’s Thanksgiving Eve playoff rematch versus the Warriors.

Kevin Durant (personal reasons), Steven Adams (right ankle tendinopathy), and Tari Eason (right oblique strain) were all sidelined, and veterans Fred VanVleet (right knee) and Dorian Finney-Smith (left ankle) remain on the shelf after offseason surgeries.

Yet, the Rockets (12-4) still won for a 12th time in 14 games, and they overcame a 14-point road deficit against a high-profile Golden State squad featuring the likes of Steph Curry, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green.

The biggest reason was second-year guard Reed Sheppard, who set career-highs in points (31) and rebounds (9) while making 12-of-25 shots (48.0%), including four 3-pointers.

“He was big,” said head coach Ime Udoka, whose Rockets won despite shooting below 40% overall and 30% from 3-point range. “Reed really held us together when guys were struggling.”

For the season, Sheppard — a starter for Udoka over the past two games — is averaging 14.3 points, 3.3 assists, 2.8 rebounds, and 1.6 steals in 24.9 minutes per game. He’s shooting 48.8% overall and 45.5% on 3-pointers, with the latter figure coming in at No. 11 among hundreds of qualified NBA players.

But the advanced metrics are even more impressive. Per Basketball Reference, here’s where Sheppard ranks among his NBA peers in several impact categories:

• Box plus/minus (BPM): No. 5 (7.3)
• Defensive BPM: No. 6 (2.7)
• Offensive BPM: No. 15 (4.6)
• Win shares per 48 minutes: No. 10 (.208)
• Value over replacement player (VORP): No. 16 (0.9)
• True shooting (TS): No. 42 (62.9%)
• Player efficiency rating (PER): No. 40 (19.6)
• Steal percentage: No. 5 (3.3%)

The only players with a superior BPM are a quartet of annual Most Valuable Player (MVP) frontrunners in Nikola Jokic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Luka Doncic. At the moment, Sheppard is the league’s highest-rated American player!

To say the least, those are remarkable efficiency metrics for a 21-year-old in his second NBA season. And it’s not as if Sheppard is posting those in low-leverage minutes, as evidenced by the key plays he made in the fourth quarter to help put the Warriors away.

“Defensively is where he’s shown the most improvement, overall,” Udoka said from San Francisco. “I think he’s taking on the challenge. The blow-bys are getting less and less. He’s catching up with the physicality of the game. Teams are going to try to attack him, at times, but like we said last year and during this summer, make them go east and west and stay in front of them. Help will come. He’s doing a great job of that.”

Sixteen games in, it’s no longer a particularly small sample. Rounding, it’s actually 20% of the 82-game regular season!

Assuming relative health, the 2025-26 Rockets had a high floor entering the season due to the All-Star presence of Durant and Alperen Sengun. But whether they could achieve a championship ceiling likely depended on further leaps from young players — most notably, the high-upside ones like Sheppard and Amen Thompson.

With Durant out, Thompson was the headliner in Monday’s road victory in Phoenix, and Sheppard stole the show two nights later at Golden State.

For everyone surrounding the organization, it’s an appropriate time to be thankful. With these leaps being shown from players who are extremely young and still improving, the Rockets appear set up to be a force in the Western Conference for quite some time.

“It’s going to be exciting when we get fully healthy and whole,” Udoka surmised.

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