Reed Sheppard showed up to Houston Rockets Media Day with a look that was impossible to miss.
The former Kentucky guard, entering his third NBA season, arrived with his hair grown out and a mustache that immediately set off the internet. Known for his baby-faced image, Sheppard suddenly looked a lot older than 22 - enough to spark plenty of jokes, comparisons, and memes across social media.
“It wasn’t planned,” he said Tuesday. “I just grew the hair out for the summer and never went and got a haircut before this. I’ll get a haircut sometime this week, but I feel good.”
That didn’t slow the reactions. One X user wrote, “He looks like Miles Teller playing Reed Sheppard,” while another posted, “The Houston Rockets have just signed Nacho Libre Reed Sheppard to the roster!”
The jokes kept rolling, including references to the “Cocaine Curry” nickname Sheppard picked up coming out of Kentucky because of his shooting comparisons to Steph Curry. Even the Pablo Escobar comparisons made their way into the mix.
For now, though, the new look sounds temporary. Sheppard said it likely won’t last long, and he expects to have a haircut before the Rockets’ exhibition trip to China in early October.
“Probably not (keeping it),” he said at the podium. “I just haven’t got a haircut yet.
I don’t really know what I’m waiting on. My goal was to get one before Media Day, but as you can tell, that goal did not happen.
Before we go to China, I will have a haircut of some sort, whether it’s still long or short, whatever, we’ll see.”
The hairstyle may be the headline grabber, but Sheppard says the real focus is on taking another step after a strong sophomore season. He averaged 13.5 points per game on 43/39/80 shooting splits and played 26.2 minutes per contest.
After a rough rookie year and a second season that brought both highs and lows, Sheppard says the summer work was all about sharpening what already showed up on film - and fixing the parts that didn’t.
“It changed because I knew what to work at,” Sheppard said of his offseason approach. “I got the experience on the court, I got to play, I got the reps.
Being able to take from the film or whatever it was that I needed to get better at-being stronger, handling the ball, going to the rim, defensively, using my chest. Whatever it was, just being able to actually see that and clips where I did good and clips where I did bad, just figuring out the little things to help.
Being in the weight room this summer, getting stronger, and overall working on basketball, always becoming the best player I can. … It was a great summer.”
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Will Steins role in the win comes through clearly in the new footage, with the head coach providing the kind of sideline presence that helps explain why the Wildcats stayed composed away from home. The series captures more than just the final score, offering a fuller look at how Kentucky managed the emotional and tactical side of one of its more meaningful conference road wins. [Read more 🡒]