It's been a "wild" journey for Middleton, who hit key shots again and again last season to help the Bucks win the NBA championship with 40 points in the Finals, and the 30-year-old is a tough shot creator and shooter, but this season he was in a tough and all-around decline.
He averaged 20 points per game in his first six games, which seems good, but in these games he shot 52.7 percent from the field and 25.7 percent from three-point range, which was one of the reasons for his inefficiency at the start of the season. However, he missed some games because of health and safety protocols, averaging about 17 points per game when he returned, but returned to more than 30 percent from three-point range.
But his true shooting percentage and effective shooting percentage are still below the career average, and then he pushed the game through the game because of a left knee injury, and everything seems to be much worse, and it is clear that if the Bucks want to defend the title, they are most eager for a healthy and efficient Middleton. Otherwise, everything is empty talk.
After returning again, Middleton did not disappoint the Bucks, and he seemed to have returned from last season's playoff heroism. In the last 9 games, he has averaged more than 20 points per game, and his efficiency has improved significantly, the true shooting rate has reached 61%, the effective shooting rate has increased to 54%, which is higher than the career average of 52.8%, and he has shot about 6 three-point shots per game, shooting 40%, which is excellent in terms of production and shooting rate.
His killer, the mid-range jumper, has also recovered from a 39% shooting rate to 45%, everything is developing in a good direction, and the Bucks have gradually come out of the "downturn" at the beginning of the season and begun to show their strong offensive and defensive capabilities.
Middleton's biggest problem at the moment is his shooting percentage at the end of the paint, where he made 70 shots this season with a shooting percentage of less than 36 percent, and last season he made about 200 shots in the zone with a 50 percent shooting percentage. Obviously, Middleton is starting to get back in form, but to be on the NBA Finals stage again, he needs to return his shooting in any area to near or above his career average.