Does Shake Milton have a place in the Philadelphia 76ers’ future?

As weird as it may sound, Shake Milton is the fourth-longest tenured player on the Philadelphia 76ers‘ roster, right behind Joel Embiid, Furkan Korkmaz, and Ben Simmons, who, yes, is still technically on the team until Woj says otherwise.

He’s transformed himself from a very late second-round pick signed to a two-way contract to a legitimate game-in, game-out double-digit scorer on one of the best contracts in the NBA, all the while having his own mini Linnsanity moment just before the season was placed on hold in 2020.

To some, Milton is an ideal sixth man who could provide pop off the bench for seemingly any NBA team with playoff aspirations, but when you really dig into his on-court performances, some warts are a lot harder to hide than others.

For one, Milton is an average-at-best 3 point shooter. Sure, occasionally, he’ll whip off a 5-7 performance from beyond the arc, but over his last 82 regular season appearances – split over the last two seasons – Milton has connected on 34.5 percent of his 3 point attempts, including 37 percent on catch-and-shoot attempts.

Furthermore, while Milton has gotten better as a distributor, recording five or more assists in four of the 19 games he’s appeared in so far this season, he often gets the blinders on when the ball is in his hands and all but ignores his teammates. This wouldn’t be the worst-case scenario, as plenty of sixth men like, say, Jordan Clarkson or Lou Williams, aren’t particularly known for their passing, Milton’s offensive bag of tricks isn’t nearly as deep as the two most recent Sixth Man of the Year award winners, which can cause him to get frustrated on drives and force bad shots.

Factor in Milton’s perpetually poor defensive effort, and you’re left with a 25-year-old combo guard with a team option on his contract for 2022-23 and a questionable fit in the team’s future, depending on whether Tyrese Maxey, Ben Simmons, or Damian Lillard is running the point moving forward.

With all of those potential futures in mind, how secure is Shake Milton in the Philadelphia 76ers’ future?

Shake Milton presents the Philadelphia 76ers with a unique asset.

If Tyrese Maxey is the Philadelphia 76ers’ point guard moving forward, they probably can’t roll with Shake Milton as the team’s PG2.

Now granted, that doesn’t mean Milton has to be traded immediately per se, as his best position at the NBA level might just be as an off-ball shooting guard with secondary ball-handling duties, but to really optimize Maxey’s potential both in the regular season and once playoff basketball rolls around, the team might just be better off landing a two-way veteran guard who can play alongside or in place of the second-year secondary scoring threat.

Would Maxey look good playing alongside, say, Eric Bledsoe, Delon Wright, or my personal favorite, Terry Rozier? The results may vary depending on the specific player, but as a general rule, securing a complementary guard would be beneficial to Maxey’s overall growth.

And what about if Ben Simmons opts to return to the Sixers’ starting lineup… just kidding. At this point, I think we can collectively cross that one out once and for all.

How about if the Sixers are ultimately able to secure a premier point guard to pair up with Joel Embiid moving forward, a player like Damian Lillard, just for the sake of argument. How would Milton fit on a roster with a guard like Lillard, assuming the six-time All-Star’s addition would cost Maxey in the process. With that particular roster construction in mind, Milton may actually be a pretty good on-court fit, as he’d be able to play an off-ball role on occasion alongside Lillard and be able to run the show when he’s off the court, either paired up with Seth Curry, Furkan Korkmaz, or solo surrounded by non-ball handling shooters.

As many an observer has pointed out over the years, Milton really would shine in a role where he’s like the sixth guy on the scouting report instead of the fourth, and having two All-NBA-level players like Embiid and Lillard would certainly ease the burden placed on number 18.

Who knows, on a young/rebuilding team where he’s afforded 28-32 minutes of action a night and a long enough leash to play freely without fear of getting benched, maybe Shake Milton could really come into his own and develop into a legit top-6 player for an NBA team a few years down the line? Maybe he’d excel playing for a team like the Sacramento Kings, Houston Rockets, or Indiana Pacers, where winning isn’t as important as player development, and his subtraction could bring back a better-fitting player to the City of Brotherly Love. But if you’re one of those people who throws Milton in as matching salary every time you fire up the trade machine, may I suggest thinking otherwise next time? Milton’s a good, albeit flawed player who has value around the league and maybe even on the Philadelphia 76ers, depending on how their roster evolves over the coming months.