Resilience Will Be Crucial For Rashad Vaughn After A Rough Rookie Season With The Milwaukee Bucks
By Ti Windisch
Rashad Vaughn will need to keep his head up despite his rough rookie season to continue growing with the Milwaukee Bucks.
Rashad Vaughn probably expected his rookie season to go a whole lot better than it has gone. Vaughn dropped in the draft due to an injury, but was an effective scorer with UNLV and went to a re-invigorated Milwaukee Bucks team fresh off of a comeback season.
Instead of being a crucial bench shooter for a squad looking to prove itself as a top four team in the Eastern Conference, Vaughn has bounced to the D-League and back from a team that looks to move up to the top seven in the NBA Draft lottery.
Bad teams provide good opportunities to young players looking for playing time, but unfortunately Vaughn has been unable to seize even a consistent spot in the rotation with the 30-44 Bucks this season.
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In his 752 minutes with the Bucks, Vaughn has posted 29 assists, 18 steals, nine blocks, and 57 personal fouls. That’s one more foul than assists, steals and blocks combined.
Giannis Antetokounmpo leads the NBA in personal fouls with 234, but he’s combined for 472 assists, blocks and steals. Giannis is known for doing it all though. Mason Plumlee is in second place with 231 fouls, but his assists, blocks and steals add up to 329.
In fact, Vaughn is one of just four players in the NBA to have that many fouls and that little of almost everything else. Only Vaughn, Carl Landry, Luke Babbitt and Andrea Bargnani have at least 57 fouls and no more than 29 assists, 18 steals and nine blocks this season.
| Totals | Shooting | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | Player | Age | Tm | G | MP | FGA | 3PA | FTA | TRB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PF | PTS | FG% | 3P% | FT% | TS% | WS |
| 1 | Carl Landry | 32 | PHI | 32 | 474 | 209 | 9 | 82 | 120 | 22 | 10 | 9 | 18 | 63 | 286 | .536 | .222 | .732 | .583 | 1.5 |
| 2 | Luke Babbitt | 26 | NOP | 38 | 574 | 173 | 80 | 24 | 98 | 25 | 7 | 5 | 12 | 65 | 189 | .410 | .375 | .708 | .515 | 0.6 |
| 3 | Andrea Bargnani | 30 | BRK | 46 | 634 | 279 | 16 | 57 | 97 | 18 | 4 | 9 | 26 | 61 | 304 | .455 | .188 | .825 | .500 | 0.3 |
| 4 | Rashad Vaughn | 19 | MIL | 62 | 752 | 189 | 102 | 12 | 69 | 29 | 18 | 9 | 24 | 57 | 154 | .296 | .304 | .917 | .396 | -0.7 |
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/28/2016.
Among those four, Vaughn has by far the lowest true shooting percentage and wins added. He’s also played at least 100 more minutes than all of them. He does have the best free throw percentage, though he’s only attempted 12 foul shots.
Really, Rashad Vaughn hasn’t done much of anything. He’s played some 298 less minutes than Landry, but Landry has more points than Vaughn has points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks combined this season.
The biggest thing Vaughn needs to work on is simply doing something. Bucks fans would much rather see Vaughn try and fail than simply take a few threes and then retire to either the corner or the bench for the rest of the game, but that’s what has happened all season.
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Vaughn has scored 10 points just once all season. He’s taken more than seven shots twice, and never taken more than nine shots in a game. His career high marks are 10 points, five rebounds, four assists, two steals and a single block–not in the same game, but all separately.
It makes sense that Vaughn would be somewhat timid after a torn meniscus in college, but he needs to involve himself much more than he has. Vaughn has a pure shooting stroke and can still build himself into a good role player if he would just do more things.
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That sounds vague, but seriously, right now Vaughn doesn’t really do anything. He’ll need to change that if he wants to stick around in the NBA. It’s far from too late for the rookie wing, but he’ll need to prove himself sooner rather than later to dispel the bust reputation that’s beginning to stick to him.