As the Houston Rockets have begun the season with a 6-3 record, the preeminent storyline surrounding the team has been their ability to account for the loss of starting point guard Fred VanVleet, who suffered an ACL tear in a team mini-camp late this past offseason.
In fact, a large part of their ability to evolve around his absence has fallen to second-year guard Reed Sheppard, and, although critics will constantly compare him to VanVleet's two-way effectiveness, the moderate success that Sheppard has found so far should remind us that he is driving toward a different set of goal posts.