Durant publicly praised it! With 4 steals in a single game, the Rockets No. 1 pick finally broke out

This game was intense, and the two teams did not decide the winner until the last quarter. The Rockets' young guard Sheppard played very well. He sent out steals at critical moments and hit a three-pointer from the bottom corner, helping the team reach a scoring climax at the last moment. In the end, the Rockets defeated the Bucks 122-115 and won a valuable away victory.

Sheppard is actually not favored by Rockets fans. As the third overall pick in 2024, he failed to perform at the level expected of a high-ranking rookie. Last season, in his rookie year, Sheppard averaged 4.4 points and 1.4 assists per game, and his three shooting percentages were 35.1%, 33.8% and 81.3% respectively, which is indeed relatively mediocre.

The Rockets' main guard VanVleet has been seriously injured for the season, so the Rockets considered letting Shepard and Amen Thompson take on the task of handling the ball. However, Shepard is obviously not good at playing point guard. He is just a scorer and cannot take into account personal scoring and the work of connecting the team. His brain cannot handle two things at the same time.

So the Rockets used Sheppard as the scorer, and the ball control and organization tasks were handed over to Thompson and Shen Jing, and the entire team ran much smoother. Today, Shepard made 6 of 10 shots from the field and 4 of 6 from beyond the three-point line. He scored 16 points, 2 assists and 4 steals. He was the primary contributor to the Rockets' victory.

After the game, Durant, who scored 31 points, also praised Shepard in an interview, saying that without Shepard's steals and three-pointers, the game would not have been won. In the last three games, Sheppard averaged 14.7 points, 3 assists and 2.3 steals per game, and his three-point shooting percentage reached 58.8%.