Thon Maker: Milwaukee Bucks’ modern center must go back in time

Thon Maker has a modern and potentially devastating skill-set, but he’ll have to tap into the past for the Milwaukee Bucks to capitalize on it.

Imagine a player — a unicorn, if you will — who performs the unenviable tasks of a traditional center, yet has range and skill reminiscent of his smaller counterparts who can’t just get by on physical prowess.

He anchors the defense, cleans up the boards and liberates the offense. That player makes all 30 NBA general managers salivate…with good reason.

Look, for example, at Boston Celtics center Al Horford, a legitimate Defensive Player of the Year candidate who shoots 42.2 percent from 3-point range. Horford is the glue that holds the NBA’s best defense together, but on the other end, his impact is even larger.

Horford’s gravity pulls lane-clogging bigs out to the perimeter, opening the floor and allowing his teammates to attack the rim with ferocity and impunity. The result? The Celtics shoot a staggering 9.7 percent better at the rim with Horford on the floor vs. off, and their overall offense is 10.9 points per 100 possessions better.

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When the Milwaukee Bucks selected Thon Maker with the 10th pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, they envisioned a player in Horford’s mold, a basketball savant capable of both operating in the trenches and unshackling an offense built around a certain Greek superstar in desperate need of space to attack.

Maker’s had a thoroughly disappointing year, regressing on both ends, more like a player in his second-to-last year rather than his second. Offensively, he’s far from perfect, but he’s close to adequate. He’s converting from deep at 34.6 percent, which, while unspectacular, is enough to force opposing centers to guard him (though his reluctance to shoot gives defenders some leeway).

It’s the non-stretch aspects of being a stretch-5 where Maker really struggles. That’s not to say he’s completely without virtue as a traditional center. Maker shows a great deal of promise as an enthusiastic — often emphatic — shot-blocker. He allows opponents to shoot 59.1 percent at the rim, a perfectly respectable mark.

But Maker is an unmitigated disaster as a rebounder. Horford, great as he is, is a notoriously impotent rebounder. His total rebound percentage is 13.1 percent; Maker’s is only 12.3 percent.

Maker is 7’1” and weighs 223 pounds; his body type is essentially pencil. And it shows. Routinely, burlier men push him around with ease:

If you can’t rebound, you can’t end possessions, and if you can’t end possessions, you can’t defend — regardless of how emphatically you send back shots. When Maker’s on the court, the Bucks allow 7.8 more points per 100 possessions than with him off. His struggles on the glass cannot be dismissed.

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The idea of Thon Maker is great. It’s the perfect modern center, the perfect frontcourt mate for Giannis Antetokounmpo. But for that idea to be actualized, Maker has to grow. He has to become much of the very player that his breed of unicorn is putting out of work: a traditional center.