Section 215
Fansided

Philadelphia 76ers: Shake Milton’s Sixth Man of the Year case explained

By Matty Breisch

(Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
(Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images) /
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For a moment, it looked like the season was over for Philadelphia 76ers guard Shake Milton.

After breezing out to a nice little start against the Charlotte Hornets, the 24-year-old pulled up with a non-contact knee injury and was walked to the locker room to have it checked out further.

Now typically, this isn’t a good sign. Any time the words “non-contact” and “knee” are included in the same sentence, there’s a very, very, very good chance it ends in tragedy.

Fortunately, minutes later, Milton was back on the bench and returned to the game midway through the third quarter for a 10-minute run that in the third/fourth quarter that saw the 24-year-old score four points and an assist. Even with his injury, Milton still finished out the game with a bench-leading 13 point performance in 19 minutes of action and provided the Sixers with enough pop to secure in W in a game that was far too close for comfort.

Though Milton is technically listed as day-to-day on the Sixers’ injury report, he’s expected to go versus the Portland Trail Blazers and should remain a fixture of Doc Rivers‘ rotation for the foreseeable future – which is nice because the Shakester is playing like a legit Sixth Man of the Year candidate.

The Philadelphia 76ers have their best sixth man since Lou Williams.

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When the Philadelphia 76ers are at their best, they have a dynamic scoring guard coming off the bench.

Back in 2018-19, a season that many have come to romanticize, the Sixers didn’t go from a feel-good story to a legitimate playoff puncher until they landed ex-Atlanta Hawks guard Marco Belinelli (and Ersan Ilyasova) via the buyout market.

Though Belinelli wasn’t some transcendent piece capable of making fans forget about Lou Williams, Jamal Crawford, or even Dennis Schroder, his 13.6 points per game and pension for taking goofy trick shots helped to elevate Brett Brown’s squad considerably and near-single-handedly secured the team a pair of wins versus Miami with two 20-plus point performances.

And, in a true twist of serendipity, the Sixers found their next great sixth man in an unconventional place – this time with a late second-round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.

Despite taking the long way to the NBA by One-and-Done standards, playing three years at SMU under two different head coaches before starting out his NBA career on a two-way contract, Milton has firmly arrived and should be considered one of the more promising guards under-25 in the Atlantic Division – not to mention a legitimate contender for Sixth Man of the Year.

Through 19 games, Milton is averaging the fifth-most points of any player with 10 or fewer starts in the NBA (14.2), as well as the 10th most assists (3.1) and the ninth-most steals (.8), all the while averaging 24.4 minutes of action a night. While none of those numbers are particularly jaw-dropping on their own, at least in the context of a league where Joel Embiid is averaging 28 and 11 night after night, they are more than solid in the context of the current Sixth Man of the Year conversation, and have the potential to become even more promising depending on how the season ‘shakes‘ out.

From 2018-20, Doc Rivers has the rare historical designation of having coached two separate Sixth Men of the Year award winners in subsequent seasons in Montrezl Harrell and our old friend “Lemon Pepper” Lou Williams. If anyone knows the value of having a robust scoring option coming off the bench, it’s Rivers, which is why he’s remained committed to playing the third-year combo guard as a change of pace option over giving him starts when, say, Simmons or Seth Curry is unavailable to go.

But just because Milton is being utilized in a sixth-man role doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a legit Sixth Man of the Year candidate per se. Furkan Korkmaz was effectively tasked with the very same role in 2019-20 and no one thought he had a legit chance to win the award.

Are the current odds of Milton winning the award- which Vegas Insider holds at +1600 behind Chris Boucher, Goran Dragic, Terrence Ross, and odds-on favorite Jordan Clarkson – legit, or is he simply a second-tier candidate coasting on playing for a really good team with some name recognition.

Unfortunately, it’s probably more of the latter than the former.

Unless Milton can goose up his numbers across the board, especially his dismal 3 point shooting percentage of 30.3, Milton’s numbers aren’t really comparable with those of Clarkson, Dragic, or even Ross. He’s not really getting his teammates involved as a passer, lacks the pure scoring clip that made players like Williams undeniable as a flamethrower coming off the bench, and hasn’t found ways to really take over games in the same way as he did down the stretch in 2019-20.

Again, this can all turn around. The path to the award is pretty clear, and all Milton would have to do is average, say, three more points from one more made three and two more assists, and boom, he’d have near-identical numbers to Williams during in run in 2018-19. But frankly, that’s a lot easier said than done with a quarter of the season already gone.

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No, barring that unforeseen turnaround, I’d avoid investing too much money on Shake Milton’s Sixth Man of the Year and instead double-down on Joel Embiid’s MVP campaign, which is legit by any quantifiable margin. Fortunately, Milton doesn’t need to win any awards to become a viable cog in the Philadelphia 76ers’ winning ways, if anything that hunger for constant improvement should only help to fuel the team’s success moving forward – much to the chagrin of Philly fans the world over.