Passing the Buck: Did MCW Show Improvement in Milwaukee?

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Last Thursday night, the Bucks were eliminated from the playoffs in about as embarrassing a fashion as you could imagine, losing 120-66 to the Bulls in Game 6. Still, stretching Chicago to 6 games, let alone making the postseason at all, is more than anyone expected out of Milwaukee heading into the season. With Jabari Parker coming back from injury next season and the rest of a young core in tow, the future is bright for Deer Nation.

Part of that young core now consists of former Sixer Michael Carter-Williams. MCW had an up-and-down performance in his first playoff action. Most notably, he was the best player on the court in a Game 5 win, recording 22 points on 10-15 shooting, 8 rebounds, 9 assists, and 3 blocks. However, that was the only game of the series in which he shot better than 43% from the field. He also got cold-clocked by Mike Dunleavy, which wasn’t at all his fault, but still had to hurt.

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With MCW’s season in the books, I thought it would be interesting to look side-by-side at his results with both the Sixers and Bucks this season. Did he show any areas of improvement under ‘point guard whisperer’ Jason Kidd’s tutelage? Did Milwaukee use him differently in any ways? Let’s take a look at the numbers, courtesy of NBA.com Stats.

The most dramatic jump after joining Milwaukee following the All-Star Break is in offensive rating, but that’s a team-driven statistic so it’s no surprise to see that after leaving a team bound for the high lottery for one heading to the postseason. His turnovers did go down slightly, along with his assist rate, presumably because his usage rate went down a tick. He also wasn’t as relied about as a defensive rebounder with Milwaukee. The most interesting area might be the increase we see in his effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage. We should examine that a little more closely.

Now we’re really seeing something. Leaving the Sam Hinkie ‘all threes and lay-ups’ environment saw Carter-Williams’ three-point attempts take a nosedive. You can’t really blame Milwaukee; why would you want someone hitting 14% of his threes taking any more of those shots? He did also increase his FT% while taking the same number of those attempts per game; it will be interesting to see if that’s something Milwaukee was able to correct or if that’s just a 25-game sample size. But if he’s not taking his shots from three, what’s he doing on the offensive end?

As you can see, a big area of change was how often Carter-Williams posted up, doing so more than 4 times as often after joining the Bucks. It was an effective strategy for Milwaukee, as he was in the 73% percentile of the entire league in that area while donning dark green. It’s obviously never going to be a huge part of any point guard’s game (still under 10% of the time), the Bucks did it often enough that it was something the opposition would have to scout and be wary enough of to avoid putting itself in certain size mismatches while guarding MCW.

All in all, there’s little evidence that Milwaukee has been able to ‘fix’ Carter-Williams’ shot, but they have been more flexible in using him in different ways to maximize his effectiveness. Whereas Milwaukee adapted some things to their new personnel, the Sixers have an offensive system in mind, and if you don’t fit that scheme, you won’t be long for Philadelphia. It remains to be seen whether Milwaukee will be able to reach the next level without a point guard who can shoot from the outside; they’ll certainly need to find shooting at other positions (and Jabari Parker playing a lot of power forward can certainly help in that area). No matter what though, it should prove interesting to find out.