Right after the #KhashToCanada promotion launched to get him into the 3-point contest, right after the Mavericks attempted their NBA-season-high 44th 3-pointer of the game, Khris Middleton (3-point specialist) drove in for… a game-winning runner off the glass.
With that, he capped the best game of his career – the best game of his career without making a 3-pointer, that is. For the first time in his NBA life, Middleton eclipsed 20 points in a game without hitting a shot from beyond the arc. In all, 27 points on 10-of-18 shooting along with five assists and three rebounds.
Middleton’s one elite skill remains outside shooting. And there is really not a better elite skill to have. But his run of strong all-around offensive play over the past month hints at a potentially slightly higher ceiling than what most of us (this is me talking about me) assumed.
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In 200 career games with the Bucks, Middleton is shooting 42.0 percent on threes. That is third-best in franchise history (behind only Dell Curry and Keith Van Horn). And that sample size is plenty significant. This season, he is converting 44.9 percent from deep, which would be the fifth-best single-season mark in franchise history. Safe to say, Middleton is an excellent 3-point shooter, in a league where it is more important than ever to be just that.
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So to be very clear, this story is not about celebrating Middleton not making a three in that win over the Mavericks, when he shot 0-for-1 from deep. If anything, Middleton must shoot even more threes. While he is the fifth-most accurate 3-point shooter in the league, he ranks 23rd in 3-point attempts.
Granted, not everyone is Stephen Curry, able to attempt 10 threes per game (seriously, he is attempting 10 threes per game this season) while maintaining an elite accuracy. Truly, no one is or can be like Stephen Curry, in that regard.
So forget 10 3-point attempts per game, but how about 10 3-point attempts in a game every week or two or three? Truth is, Middleton has attempted 10 threes in a game exactly once in his NBA career.
The good news is that Middleton is shooting more threes than ever. Last season, he ranked 64th in 3-point attempts, compared to that 23rd ranking this season. On a per minute basis, he is easily at career highs in makes and attempts. That one game in his whole NBA career when he shot 10 threes? That was last week in Chicago.
Things are going in the right direction. How far can they go in that direction? That is the question. How many more threes can Middleton take while maintaining his remarkable accuracy? Hard to say, but considering just one team in the league has shot fewer threes than the Bucks this season, hopefully Middleton and the team will at least try to find a way, here in what looks like a permanent league-wide 3-point revolution.
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Middleton is turning a corner (maybe not “the corner”) on becoming more than a 3-point shooter, though.
Even without the assist, so to speak, from the stat sheet, you can see just by watching the games that he has improved as a passer this season. And the numbers back it up. While he may always be more of a scorer than a playmaker, he appears to be an increasingly smart passer, and his assists per minute and per game are up (from 2.3 last season to 3.7 this season) at the same time that his turnovers are even, per minute. Even more recently, even better: Middleton has racked up 4+ assists in 13 of his past 15 games (starting with the home win over the Warriors), something no one else on the team can claim. In fact, that is something that guys like Damian Lillard and Mike Conley cannot claim, either (please do not turn this into some absurd tweet, or something).
Increased assertiveness is also shown in Middleton’s increased time at the free throw line. While he still shoots a low (too low) percentage of his shots at the rim, Middleton is getting to the line significantly more this season on a per-minute and per-game (2.0 last season to 3.7 this season) basis. That is a good place for him to be, because he is hitting a career-best 87.0 percent at the line (20th-best in the league).
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The headline does not say that Middleton rules everything.
Middleton remains a quality finisher around the hoop (more accurate 0-3 feet from the hoop than Jabari Parker or Greg Monroe, for example), but he still rarely gets those shots (last on the team in percentage of shots attempted in that close range). He is a shooter first and foremost (and a taker and maker of difficult shots, even throwing in some of those turn-around fadeaway jumpers this season that Kobe and MJ had perfected), but in order to evolve as a consistent offensive force, Middleton absolutely needs to get to the basket more.
Individual defense is hard to evaluate, and it is hard not to implicate the entire roster when the team ranks 29th in efficiency on that end, but he graded as a league standout by advanced metrics last season, and cases have been made that Middleton in particular is not heavily responsible for the team defensive downgrade this season.
But perhaps even one of the few numbers that is down this season may be encouraging. Middleton has made a career-worst 43.0 percent of his 2-pointers, down from 49.4 percent last season. That feels unsustainably low, and yet in spite of that, he has put together his most efficient season to date (including a 15.8 PER).
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This is not an All-Star campaign story, because Middleton is just not at that level yet. This is also not a 3-point contest campaign story, not when we can dream a little more realistically (if not yet probably) that if all goes right, this could be an All-Star campaign story in a year, or two, or three.
