Khris Middleton Needs To Shoot More Threes
On Thursday night against the Mavericks, Khris Middleton had the worst game of his career shooting the ball. He was 6-27 from the floor and finished with just 14 points on those 27 shot attempts.
The even crazier stat is that he was 4-23 on two-pointers (17.4%) and 2-4 on threes (50%).
Naturally, looking at those numbers, you would say that he should have shot more threes. And although the game on Thursday was a crazy outlier, the overall stats this year suggest he should probably be taking more threes in general as well.
Middleton is currently attempting 5.0 threes per game this year (5.4 per 36 minutes) and making 43.4% of those threes. That 3-point percentage ranks 12th in the NBA among qualifying players, but he is outside the top 100 (113th) in 3-point attempts per 36 minutes. Those 2 things do not really add up.
Of the 11 qualifying players that have a higher 3-point percentage than Middleton this season, 10 of them are attempting at least 6.0 threes per 36 minutes, and 7 of them are attempting at least 7.0 threes per 36 minutes. Again, Khris is at just 5.4 threes attempted per 36 minutes. That isn’t enough for a shooter of his caliber. He has shown the past 2 seasons that he can still remain an elite 3-point shooter on higher volume (39.4% from three on 7.0 attempts per 36 minutes), so he shouldn’t have a problem keeping that efficiency while taking more threes.
Khris has become known as a good midrange scorer, but from an analytical standpoint, it just doesn’t make much sense the way his shots are distributed this year. Last year, he shot a remarkable 52.7% on midrange shots, the 3rd highest percentage of any player in the league (min. 100 attempts). However, this year, his midrange FG% is down to 44.0%, which is about the same as his 43.4% from three, and he is taking essentially the same amount of midrange shots per game (4.8) as 3-point shots (5.0).
If you’re shooting the same percentage on 3-point shots as you are on this 2-point shot, why wouldn’t you take more of the 3-point shot? It simply doesn’t make sense. The only way it does make sense to take a lot of midrange shots is when you are extremely efficient doing so, but Khris has lost that elite midrange efficiency this year. You need to play to your strengths, and this year his strength is 3-point shooting. He’s shooting better from three this year than ever before, yet his 3-point attempt rate is the lowest it has been since 2017.
Last year was the best (and easily most efficient) year of Khris’ career, and his shot distribution seemed to be almost perfect. He was good from three, good from midrange, and shot nearly 7.0 threes per 36 minutes. This year, he is even better from three and much worse from midrange, but he is shooting the same number of midrange shots and fewer threes. Start. Swapping. Midranges. For. Threes.
If we look at him compared to other Bucks players, there is a problem to be seen as well. Middleton is 3rd on the Bucks in 3-point percentage (among players who have played at least 750 mins), and yet here is how those Bucks players rank in 3-point attempts per 36 minutes:
Bryn Forbes (45.0%) — 9.0
Donte DiVincenzo (39.1%) — 6.8
Brook Lopez (33.8%) — 5.7
Pat Connaughton (37.6%) — 5.6
Jrue Holiday (39.4%) — 5.5
Khris Middleton (43.4%) — 5.4
Bobby Portis (46.0%) — 4.0
Giannis (30.2%) — 4.0
There should not be 4 players who are worse shooters than Khris Middleton taking more threes than him. I mean, even Giannis is taking only 1 fewer three per game than Khris. They should not be anywhere near each other.
This recent “cold stretch” from Middleton has been a great example of all of this. When you look at his last 10 games, he is shooting 52.4% from three. Great, right? Well, the problem is that his eFG% is a poor 51.7% (league average is 54%) because 3/4 of his field goal attempts are two-pointers instead of threes. He is only attempting 4 threes per game in this stretch compared to 13 twos per game, and yet he is shooting way better on the threes (52.4%) than the twos (43.3%).
Khris will always take a good amount of midrange shots because of the natural way he plays and the flow of the game, and that’s fine. He shouldn’t eliminate the midrange game completely or anything like that, but he does need to begin replacing some of these midrange and two-point shots with threes in order to get his efficiency back up to where it was last year.
He is currently in the 97th percentile in 3-Point Shot Making according to bball-index. It’s time he starts playing a little less like a midrange scorer and more like a 3-point shooter. #MakeKhrisMiddletonGreatAgain
