Marcus Smart vs Reed Sheppard
Across 3 meetings and 32 matchup possessions, Smart scored 40% above his own season rate against Sheppard. He shot 44.4% from the field in the matchup against 43.1% overall. Treat it as a pattern worth checking on film rather than proof the defender caused it.
The numbers
Each figure sits next to Smart's own rate against every defender he faced, which is the only fair comparison for this unit.
Points per matchup possession
40% above his season rate.
Field goal percentage
+1.3 points of field goal percentage, on 9 shots in the matchup.
Possessions here are partial matchup possessions, only the stretches these two were actually matched up, so points per possession runs far below the roughly 1.1 a full team scores. Every figure is meant to be read against the same player's own season rate in the same unit.
How to read this
These are the possessions the two were matched up, not a clean isolation of one defender against one scorer. Help, coverage calls, foul trouble, rest, and shot luck all live inside the same numbers, and 3 meetings is a small sample for any of them.
So a gap here is a reason to pull the film on these possessions, not evidence that the defender caused it. The useful question is what the offense tried in this matchup and what it stopped trying.
Both scouting reports
Run this matchup as a scouting report
The table above is what happened. HoopBrief turns it into a plan: what the offense wants in this pairing, the coverage that takes it away, and the read when the first option is gone.
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Related matchups
Reed Sheppard vs Marcus Smart
4 meetings · 70 poss · 0.14 pts/poss
Marcus Smart vs Amen Thompson
4 meetings · 66 poss · 0.27 pts/poss
Marcus Smart vs Jabari Smith Jr.
4 meetings · 53 poss · 0.19 pts/poss
Marcus Smart vs Tari Eason
4 meetings · 31 poss · 0.16 pts/poss
Rui Hachimura vs Reed Sheppard
3 meetings · 61 poss · 0.28 pts/poss
Jake LaRavia vs Reed Sheppard
4 meetings · 43 poss · 0.19 pts/poss
Aggregated from NBA player-matchup tracking for the current season. Possessions are partial matchup possessions and are reported to the nearest whole number here. Figures describe what happened while these two were matched up and do not isolate one player's effect on the other.