Shead

Yesterday at 06:59 PM

HOUSTON, Texas — It was just over a year ago that Jamal Shead was on the outside looking in on his NBA dream.

The Toronto Raptors were practicing at the Guy Lewis Development Centre at the University of Houston. And up above the practice floor Shead, then a star senior with the Cougars, was perched on a couch in a lounge looking down and trying to imagine his future as the Raptors went through their paces below.

Shead had no way to know for sure he was going to be drafted, even after a stellar four-year career for the Cougars. As an undersized defence-first point guard with a shaky jumper, nothing was guaranteed. As for which team would take him?

Total crapshoot.

But he was focused. This was an NBA team training on the same floor where he had just finished practising. "I was watching Quick," Shead told me Sunday before taking the floor against the Houston Rockets in his first NBA game where he played college basketball for four seasons, and just over a two-hour drive from his hometown of Austin, Texas. He was referring to his current teammate Immanuel Quickley. "He's an NBA point guard, that's where I wanted to get to."

Shead has arrived sooner than perhaps even he expected. With the Raptors’ decision to trade Davion Mitchell to the Miami Heat on Thursday morning, Shead has officially become Toronto's backup point guard. He had already been moving into that role, often getting the first crack at point guard minutes off the bench ahead of Mitchell as the 22-year-old proved more capable of handling them.

But now there's no safety net. Shead and Quickley are the only point guards in the organization.

Shead once again proved up to the task in his 18 minutes off the bench in the Raptors’ 94-87 loss to the Rockets Sunday afternoon and was one of Toronto's few bright spots as they lost their fourth straight game to fall to 16-37 on the year.

It wasn't a pretty game — 1 p.m. starts in the NBA often run a little bit ragged. As former Raptors general manager Isiah Thomas said to me a few decades ago: “These guys work nights."

Collectively they looked like a group of athletes that could have used a few more slaps at the snooze button. The Raptors shot 8-of-42 from three and the Rockets shot 10-of-38 from deep. That's 18-of-80 combined, or 22.5 per cent, which is really bad, and made the game borderline unwatchable. Was it the early start? A pending Super Bowl party?

"I wish I knew," said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. The Raptors led by 10 early in the second quarter and by five to start the fourth but saw the game slip away in the final period as Houston finally found their stroke from deep — they were 7-of-12 in the fourth — and the Raptors kept heaving bricks, making just 1-of-6 from three in the final frame.

The Rockets were playing on the second day of a back-to-back and were missing former Raptor Fred VanVleet (ankle) and regulars Tari Eason and Steven Adams, while Houston's all-star centre Alperen Sengun played just three minutes before leaving the game with back spasms.

The Raptors were missing starters Jakob Poeltl (hip pointer) and RJ Barrett (concussion protocol) while a third starter, Gradey Dick, left the game just before halftime with what was described as a neck contusion after he went to the floor hard on a layup attempt.

Quickley led the Raptors with 20 points on 6-of-15 shooting in 30 minutes, his longest stretch of playing time since returning from his hip strain 10 days ago. He had 18 points in the first half. Scottie Barnes had 15 points, nine rebounds, seven assists, two steals and one blocked shot, but was 0-of-8 from three and is now shooting just 27.7 per cent from deep for the season on five attempts per game.

But a bright spot for the Raptors was Shead, who continues to make strides offensively after being drafted 45^th overall out of Houston mainly on the strength of his defensive acumen.

He finished with 14 points in 19 minutes off the bench on 6-of-9 shooting, including 2-of-3 from deep.

Every shot he hit you could hear the distant cheers of a contingent of 60 or so friends and family who were at the Toyota Centre to watch Shead play his first game in Texas as a professional.

It was a nice touch to a weekend that featured him returning to the practice floor on his old campus on Saturday and seeing his name and likeness on the school's wall of fame alongside Cougar legends like Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon and Elvin Hayes.

"I think it’s really cool just going back to where my real journey began before this [NBA] journey began," said Shead. "I think it's really cool just to see all the love and be in Texas again."

Shead wasted little time giving his team and his island of fans something to be excited about. He assisted on an Ochai Agbaji layup the moment after he checked in and didn't hesitate to pull the trigger on his first three after he relocated to make himself available to Barnes, who was stuck in the paint and out of options.

Shead hit his second triple midway through the third quarter when the ball was swung out of the corner and around to him at the top of the circle. He was wide open and let it fly.

It's been a significant development in his game. Shead shot just 29.6 per cent from deep in college, where the three-point line is eighteen inches shorter around the top of the arc.

But the Raptors identified a mechanical flaw in his pre-draft workouts — basically, the need to keep his elbow more inside and hand more directly under the ball in his setup — and have been working with him diligently ever since. The results have been measurable.

Shead is shooting 35.2 per cent from three for the season, which is just below league average, but has been shooting better than 40 per cent since late November.

In the last month, his offence overall has continued to come on. Sunday's game against the Rockets was the fifth time in his last 14 appearances he's cracked double figures in scoring, a period over which he's averaged 8.8 points and 3.6 assists while shooting 47.8 per cent from the floor and 45.2 per cent from three.

For a point of comparison, Reed Sheppard — the former University of Kentucky point guard taken third overall in the draft last summer by Houston — is shooting just 30.3 per cent from the floor and 27.4 per cent from three for the season, although in a smaller dose of playing time with Houston (33-20), a deep team that is currently third in the Western Conference. But even on Sunday with VanVleet out Sheppard was 1-of-5 from the floor and 0-of-3 from deep in his 14 minutes. It's no comment on Sheppard's long-term potential, just to demonstrate that what Shead is doing with the opportunity he's getting shouldn't be dismissed.

His teammates are certainly taking note.

"He's been great, he's been terrific," said Quickley, who Shead was measuring himself against from afar just this time last year. "He's above the curve already. Playing here [for the University of Houston], he played for a great coach and had a lot of NBA philosophies already so he's ahead of the curve. [But] he works extremely hard and he's a great teammate on top of that. If you have all those intangibles … you'll have a long career.”

Intangibles such as?

"Great energy, always positive, don't matter what day it is, he's gonna bring it," said Quickley. "He's an energy giver, not an energy taker. You need guys like that in an 82-game season."

Having designated Quickley as their starting point guard, the Raptors still have expectations that Shead will continue to improve.

They have a list of things for him to work on:

"[There's] a lot of things. He does touch the paint [well on drives], but he’s touching the paint, attacking with his right hand. So [his left] hand needs to improve," said Rajakovic. "Once he touches the paint, connecting with his teammates — decision-making there. Sometimes he has a floater that he’s really good at [but] he uses one extra dribble that brings him under the rim where help can come and block shots and change shots.

"[The] timing of his passes when he collapses the defence. He’s not a big guy that can see over the defence, so he needs to look for those small windows of opportunities to find his teammates and connect with them.

"Leadership: He was a leader when he played here at the University of Houston this year. He used his voice. Even though he’s a rookie with us, he’s still our point guard and he needs to be able to use his voice to get guys in the huddle, get them organized, communicate with them, and to feel comfortable doing that at the NBA level with NBA guys."

It's a process, but just four months into his rookie season Shead is farther along than anyone could have expected.

"The opportunity is a blessing just being able to get out there and be in this position, first and foremost," said Shead, who credits the departed Mitchell for being a positive influence when they were sharing backup minutes together. "…  And also a learning experience, getting out there playing against the best teams. Playing against all of these dudes in your rookie year. Not a lot of people get that experience. Not a lot of people get that opportunity. So for us to be able to go out there regardless, win or lose, just trying to compete and trying to prove that [I] belong every day, day in and day out."

Shead has done just that, living out a basketball lifetime in the space of 12 months, and coming full circle in Texas.