Philadelphia 76ers: Shake Milton is back, now play him at shooting guard

Shake Milton is officially back.

After spending the last five weeks on the injury report with a back injury, the Philadelphia 76ers officially got back their other other point guard just in time for the team’s first game without Seth Curry.

Did it go well? No, not particularly; he scored four points in 25 minutes on 1-9 shooting from the field, but hey, after not being able to beat Doc Rivers in a race a few weeks back, it was nice to see the SMU product back on the court, especially with James Harden not expected until Tuesday.

For now, especially against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Philadelphia 76ers should do their best to get Shake Milton’s legs under him in time for the post-All-Star game race to the finish line. But once James Harden has landed, and the team has two legitimately talented point guards to split all 48 of their minutes at full strength, Shake Milton needs to take a page out of Seth Curry’s playbook and move off-ball full time.

Shake Milton is a better fit at shooting guard for the Philadelphia 76ers.

For about a month in 2020, Shake Milton looked like what Tyrese Maxey would eventually become for the Philadelphia 76ers.

After being told he no longer had a spot in Brett Brown’s rotation after the All-Star break, Milton found playing time via an injury to Ben Simmons and burst onto the scene in spectacular fashion, dropping 39 on Doc Rivers’ Los Angeles Clippers.

Indeed the Sixers looked like they had a burgeoning star on their hands in the Shakesta, as Brown would say, and he was treated as such when he made a special appearance on ESPN’s The Jump.

And then the pandemic hit, and suddenly, that momentum came to a screeching halt.

When the season eventually resumed, Brown was getting ready to radically alter his offensive status quo, with Milton playing point guard and Simmons transitioning into a hybrid forward role, but alas, that too wasn’t meant to be; Simmons suffered his second season-ending injury of the calendar year, and the Sixers found themselves in a first-round series against the Celtics where Milton just couldn’t get the ball to Joel Embiid in the paint.

Fast forward to 2020-21, the team’s first season under Doc Rivers, and Milton’s role evolved into that of a sixth man, tasked with providing some juice off the bench a la his former player Lou Williams. He played 90 percent of his minutes off the ball and turned in the best full season of his career despite having a pretty tough time from an efficiency standpoint.

But in 2021-22, down his fifth-most frequent on-court partner in crime, Milton has played 60 percent of his minutes at the one and has taken a step back from his high watermark the previous season. Despite spending more time with the ball in his hands, Milton’s assist numbers have been down, and he’s largely looked out of place when on the court, as his BPM, OnCourt, and On-Off stats all show.

Needless to say, once James Harden and Maxey take the court as the Sixers’ starting backcourt, it might be wise to move Milton back off the ball and into a role that highlights his scoring strengths and hides his deficiencies.

So far this season, Milton’s most efficient on-court two-man lineup has been with Embiid, with four more two-man pairings with a positive net rating alongside Matisse Thybulle, Seth Curry, Tobias Harris, and Andre Drummond. By contrast, Milton and Maxey haven’t played nearly as well together in the 277 minutes they’ve shared together, with a net rating of -3.3 to show for their efforts.

Now granted, Maxey has taken a massive step forward as a floor spacer since Milton became an injury report fixture, but in an ideal world, pairing “Protein Shake” with “The Beard” feels like a pretty safe bet. The duo can make plays for each other, work the two-man game off of screens, and most importantly of all, create a definitive hierarchy that allows Milton to spend more time without the ball in his hands.

Do players typically get better when they have fewer responsibilities? Not always, but the addition of Harden should streamline Milton’s offensive responsibilities and give him more opportunities to let it fly without taking a dribble without a defender impeding his sightline.

If that can happen, maybe Milton’s 3 point shooting percentage will, um, shoot up rapidly, and his quarter dozen assists per game will be looked at as a supplemental asset instead of an underwhelming mark for a primary offensive facilitator. Maybe he’ll again enter the Sixth Man of the Year conversation, and the Sixers will find themselves a far more complete team than they were a work ago.

Either way, it’s worth trying.

When Ben Simmons initiated “the holdout,” it sent the Philadelphia 76ers’ plans into disarray. Players with firmly established roles had to take on different responsibilities, role players had to accept larger roles, and Tyrese Maxey had to transform himself into a legit Rising Star-caliber player for the team to even have a chance at treading water. But now, with James Harden in and only Seth Curry/Andre Drummond out of Doc Rivers’ rotation, things should return to a sense of elevated normalcy. With an elite player now in the post and on the perimeter, the lives of players like Shake Milton, Tobias Harris, and Matisse Thybulle should become a whole lot easier, especially if they are put in optimal positions to succeed.