Khris Middleton taking advantage of analytics revolution

Conventional wisdom informed by analytics tells us that defenses are playing him just right, but Khris Middleton is capitalizing on this misconception.

Every shot in basketball has value. Sure, certain ones — corner 3s and shots at the rim, notably — present higher expected values because their difficulty-to-value ratios are out of whack, but that doesn’t mean that oft-maligned shots, like mid-range jumpers, are completely without utility.

If you’ve read any of my work before (or follow me on Twitter), you’re familiar with my obsession with efficiency. Shot selection is undoubtedly a major factor in efficiency, so it’s slightly out of character for yours truly to sing the praises of the mid-range jumper.

I mean, think about what a mid-ranger is. It is an inherently more difficult shot than any other two-pointer, but the payoff is the same. Why would you ever shoot them?

The answer is, you would if you’re really damn good at it.

Milwaukee Bucks wing Khris Middleton knows a thing or two about that. Look at his shot chart this year:

Even I have to admit that’s a thing of beauty. Middleton is shooting 49 percent on mid-range shots this year. That translates to 0.98 points per mid-range shot attempt, which, initially, sounds far from mind-blowing.

But consider this: the Toronto Raptors score 0.98 points per play in half-court situations. That’s the fourth-best mark in the league.

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Half-court offense is hard. Defenses are set and generating efficient shots is a challenge. It’s not the chaotic scoring melee that is transition offense.

That Middleton mid-range jumper sounds a lot more appealing now, doesn’t it?

Therefore, it’s mystifying that defenses give Middleton that shot over and over and over again. And yes, they give him that shot.

Middleton finishes possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler on 20.4 percent of the possessions he uses. On those possessions, he scores at an elite clip: 1.05 points per possession. Among players who have finished at least 50 possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler, that’s fourth-best, behind names like LeBron James and Stephen Curry.

Here’s a typical Middleton pick-and-roll possession:

Middleton’s defender — Avery Bradley in this case — must go over the screen. Middleton’s a career 40 percent 3-point shooter; going under is not an option.

The defense executes a “drop” coverage, in which the screener’s defender retreats back to contain the ball-handler and buy time for the on-ball defender to catch up to his man.

The “drop” coverage is a favorite today, because analytically, it’s the logical approach to containing pick-and-roll. The defense willingly surrenders a fairly open mid-range jumper, which is, theoretically, a shot worth surrendering.

Generally, that theory is proven true. But Middleton is an elite mid-range jump shooter. To him, a theoretically bad shot is highly efficient half-court offense.

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In the right context, every shot in basketball has value. For Kristaps Porzingis, a face-up jumper over his defender is a good shot. For Stephen Curry, a 31-footer is a good shot. For Khris Middleton, an open mid-ranger is a good shot. In theory, the defense might be doing exactly what it wants, but in practice, it’s inviting Middleton to pick it apart.

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