Ben Sheppard is in overdrive, for worse and perhaps, eventually, better

Injuries have strong-armed the third-year guard into displaying a stronger grasp of his handle

By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper

During crunch-time against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Ben Sheppard was assessed a defensive three-second violation while somewhat absentmindedly loading up against Julius Randle at the strong-side elbow without guarding anyone. Seconds later, he committed a three-shot foul, clipping Donte DiVincenzo in the corner after pushing through a pindown screen from Randle. On a night when he went 0-of-5 from deep, he also came up empty on a transition three in which Pascal Siakam opted to feed him to his left, enabling the lanky forward to pass across his chest with his right, rather than setting up Aaron Nesmith, who was also available on the opposite side of the floor. On the next possession, Sheppard drew contact at the rim on a double-clutch layup, but he went one of two at the line. At the other end of the floor, he returned the favor, compounding a dunk from Rudy Gobert with a foul from behind after arriving a beat too late as the single-side tagger.

Needless to say, after logging 32 minutes of action as one of only three guards available, Ben Sheppard didn't exactly look like Ben Sheppard. For the most part, he only knows how to play at one speed. Last season, among the 262 players in the NBA who played at least 1,000 minutes, no one spent a higher percentage of their time on the floor playing "fast" (as defined by Genius Sports as more than 14 feet per second) than Sheppard, at 13.97 percent. Through the first three games of the season, he's barely slowed down, moving "fast" on 12.51 percent of his minutes, even as he's seen those minutes increase from an average of less than 20 last season to over 30 this season. He's still diving on the floor for lose balls, rapidly sliding his feet, and darting here, there, and everywhere to connect actions, but now he also has to do more of everything else, as an initiator, on top of just playing more.

A year ago, with Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, and T.J. McConnell steering the offense, Sheppard didn't even bring the ball up the floor two times per game. In Monday's loss to Minnesota, he recorded 14 possessions as the bring-up ballhandler. Meanwhile, Genius Sports also tracks touches and average touch time. When multiplying those two numbers together for Sheppard and dividing by the same product for the team as a whole, he's had the ball 13.2 percent of the time for the Pacers through the first three games, compared to just 2.9 percent as a sophomore.

In that way, while he certainly isn't dominating the ball (i.e. his usage rate has barely budged), he's definitely seen an increase in how frequently he's been on-ball. At times, that increased workload has seemed to adversely affect other areas of his game. It's rare to see him cut corners as a defender; and yet, he got punished for ducking way under on an off-ball action against DiVincenzo that resulted in a wide open three, and as the aforementioned rundown of his late-game mistakes seems to indicate, he looked like his normally high-octane engine was running on fumes by the time it was closing time in Minnesota.

Of course, when eight players are on an injury list that grew to also include Obi Toppin, them's the breaks, to an extent. Then again, by virtue of the need for him to hit the gas more often, there's also been another, arguably more positive, way in which Ben Sheppard hasn't exactly looked like Ben Sheppard.

He's driving the ball more frequently.

• 2022-23: 3.7 drives per 100 possessions, 0.875 points per direct drive

• 2024-25: 1.8 drives per 100 possessions, 0.978 points per direct drive

• 2025-26: 6.7 drives per 100 possessions, 1.364 points per direct drive

Granted, some of that uptick can be explained merely by the fact that he's handling the ball more often out of necessity due to the staggering number of injuries at both guard positions, but he's also turned the ball downhill more effectively and with more verve against starting-level competition. Just look at this empty-side pick-and-roll with 6-foot-10 Jaden McDaniels at the point of attack. The coverage gets botched with Julius Randle staying attached to Pascal Siakam at the three-point line rather than stopping the ball (oh hey, off-ball gravity!), but that's Rudy Gobert rotating to the basket and Sheppard still manages to finish, using his body to shield the ball with a physical last step.

He also uncharacteristically salvaged the first possession of the game against the Grizzlies attacking out of this toss-and-chase reignition trigger from Bennedict Mathurin. With Jaren Jackson Jr. roaming into his driving lane, Sheppard recognized the backline coverage and pulled up for two, marking only the seventh such make, coming off two or more dribbles from inside the arc, of his career.

Here the Pacers are running one of their favorite, go-to actions involving Siakam, a wedge roll. With the wedge screen from Mathurin for Siakam making the screener defender late on the ball-screen from Siakam for Sheppard, the third-year, normally off-ball mover still managed to get to the rim, despite the fact that his defender ducked under. Then, he adjusted in mid-air to finish with his left against the secondary rim protection from the guard. Once again, highlighting the benefit of spacing guards - rather than bigs - in the dunker spot.

There's been some missed passing reads. If this had been a pocket pass instead of a wraparound, the on-ball defender wouldn't have been able to veer into the path of Jackson as the screener. Still, there's evidence of Sheppard getting a better handle on his handle, as he can be seen jailing his defender with a hostage dribble as he turns the corner.

In a departure from his usual tendency to be overly deferential, he's even gone so far as to be slightly overzealous in how far his handle should reasonably take him. Turns out, there's a difference between beating Rudy Gobert to the punch in rotation and attacking him head on.

That said, there's still progress that can be seen with how he progresses with the ball. On the flip-back from Nesmith, notice how he pushes the ball out in front with his inside hand to improve his movement efficiency. His defender ducked under, so the impact of that "inside-to-outside" attack isn't quite as visible, but that maneuver should lead to a more threatening, north-south attacking angle against defenders that chase over more aggressively.

And, here's the thing, all of those actions, be it the wedge roll, guard-to-guard flip-back out of the wide screen, or the zoom action (handoff with a pindown in the middle) out of the baseline out of bounds play, are typically executed by the team's point guards and, sometimes, Bennedict Mathurin -- not Ben Sheppard. As such, those plays likely won't be called for Ben Sheppard once all of those players are back in the lineup. In the meantime, though, the strides that Sheppard has made in actually taking strides with his handle could result in him being more effective when he returns to continuing the advantages created by his teammates rather than being pressed into creating advantages for his teammates. After all, with a shot fake and some off-hand activation, he outraced and outmaneuvered Chet Holmgren to finish at the rim.

Those types of plays, in which he actually looks at the rim and proceeds to attack out of closeouts and spot-up situations rather than automatically triggering the extra pass or advancing the ball with a neutral pass, are where he can sharpen his game -- by sharpening the degree to which he's capable of puncturing an already titled defense. He's searching out some of those pinpricks more often.

This miscommunication with Jarace Walker that resulted in a turnover happened because the mustachioed makeshift point guard was hunting the same backdoor opportunity from earlier in the quarter when he not only set up his man but also evaded the dig from the strong-side corner en route to gliding around another undersized defender at the rim.

Through the first three games of the season, Ben Sheppard has at times been stretched to his limits in attempting to stretch his legs as a makeshift point guard. While attempting to fill in for a slew of injured players, even as he's also only just returned from his own injury that caused him to miss a large portion of training camp, he hasn't always looked like himself -- for reasons both good and bad. And yet, the fact that he's been in literal overdrive, both with regard to being overtaxed as well as in reference to how much more frequently he's been driving, means that, although the effects have not always led to winning plays with an expanded role in the short-term, the impact he's able to make with his normal role, when combined with a potentially stronger grasp of his handle, could result in the addition of a better role player when the team, hopefully, gets better in the long-term.