Brandon Knight: Milwaukee’s Best Shooting Guard?
By Ti Windisch
I’m going to start off my first article here at Behind the Buck Pass with some honesty, and a disclaimer.
I’m a Brandon Knight fan.
I had no idea who he was before we traded another Brandon I always kind of liked (I just have a thing for dysfunctional point guards I suppose) to the Detroit Pistons for him before last season. But how quickly I learned to embrace our newest Brandon!
On a Bucks team last year that was literally the worst team in basketball, he was one of approximately two bright spots (the other of course being Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Greek Freak, inventor of the Gyro Step and smoothie lover).
Knight averaged almost 18 points a game last season, not incredibly impressive on its own but certainly not terrible either considering it put him in the top ten scorers among all point guards that season(and tied for third in the Eastern Conference behind only Irving, Wall and tied with Lowry).
This season, his numbers have actually increased across the board though. His points per game is up from 17.9 to 18.2, his shooting percentage went from 42.2 percent to 45.1 percent, and his three point percentage shot up from a pretty mediocre 32.5 percent, all the way up to 40 percent so far this season. So everything is good, right?
Wrong.
Knight is very very good at shooting and scoring. He does have a shortcoming though, a pretty large one to overcome for a man who fills the role of floor general.
He just isn’t very good at being a point guard.
His assist to turnover ratio is frankly terrible compared to other point guards. Knight is tied for 71st (with Josh Smith of all people) in the league with a 1.51 assist to turnover ratio. 71st in the league might not sound so bad, but what’s even worse is that number means he’s the 42nd best point guard as far as assist/turnover ratio is concerned too.
That means that there’s one point guard for every team better than Brandon Knight at passing the ball, and then enough to fill another two divisions worth as well. In his third season, it would probably be overly optimistic to expect a huge turnaround in Knight’s passing/ball security at this point too.
It might eventually get better as his shooting numbers have, but I really don’t expect to see Knight triple his numbers to end up giving Chris Paul company at the top of the assist/turnover leader-board any time soon.
So does this mean that we should look to trade Knight to maximize his value, and avoid potentially overpaying for a guy to run the offense that isn’t actually very gifted at playing point guard?
A lot of Bucks fans have been answering this question with a resounding YES all season long, and even dating back to last season. I’m here writing this article to posit a different answer-no.
See, I think people have been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking if Knight is the Milwaukee Bucks’ point guard of the future, lets see how he would look as the Milwaukee Bucks’ shooting guard of the present.
One of the biggest knocks against Knight as our long-term point guard is the aforementioned Assist/Turnover Ratio, which as I mentioned, rates very poorly among point guards across the league. I wanted to know how it ranks among the league’s shooting guards though, so I did some digging.
This list is substantially shorter (you have to be on pace for 200 season assists to make it), but Knight’s 1.51 holds up much, much better here.
He comes in 15th, ahead of Kobe Bryant (which would’ve been far more meaningful in years past) and more surprisingly Klay Thompson (a player who I hear a fair bit about, but never that he’s unfit to be re-signed by his team due to his assist/turnover ratio).
He also comes in only .05 assists per turnover worse than fellow Buck OJ Mayo, again, a player who’s assist/turnover ratio is almost never brought up. But let’s look at not just whoever falls close to Knight in the rankings, lets look at James Harden, the man I believe to be the best shooting guard in the NBA (sorry Jimmy Butler).
Harden is a surefire MVP candidate this season, and easily a top ten player in the league today. His assist/turnover ratio? 1.66. Only a little over one tenth of an assist per turnover better than Knight. If you’re wondering how Knight’s scoring and PER match up to other shooting guards, I’ve got you covered on that one too.
His 18.2 PPG would make him the seventh highest scoring point guard, and his Player Efficiency Rating of 18.61 leaves him just shy of Monta Ellis’ 18.60, good enough for eighth in the NBA.
I would argue that Knight’s assist/turnover ratio would probably decrease if he saw time at shooting guard, as not having to be the primary ball handler would leave him to do what he does better than anyone on the Bucks roster: score.
I would say from the numbers listed in this article that Knight would easily be one of the top seven or eight shooting guards in the NBA if he switched positions, and one of the best in the Eastern Conference alongside with Dwyane Wade and Butler.
Personally, if I was Jason Kidd I would start him at the two guard spot right away.
Knight has said many times he sees himself as a point guard. That’s fine I suppose, I mean when I play pickup games I see myself as a point power forward in a similar mold to LeBron, and I’m a (not so) towering 6 feet tall.
The difference is that coaches are paid money to coach, not to leave it up to the players to establish their position. I truly believe that the best coaching decision would be to have Brandon Knight be Milwaukee’s starting shooting guard as soon as possible.
Its not like we don’t have a point guard ready to run the offense either. Kendall Marshall, aka K-Butter, is one of the best passing point guards in the entire league. In very limited minutes this season, K-Butter has a 2.46 assist/turnover ratio, he plays tenacious defense and seems like one of the best hustle players on a great hustle team.
He may not be a dynamic scorer like Knight, but he really doesn’t have to be to run this offense. Getting guys like Knight and Giannis good open looks will lead to a better, more efficient Milwaukee offense in its own right.
Making Brandon Knight our shooting guard can really streamline this offense, making the entire team better and maybe, finally quelling the anti-Knight sentiment that has been brewing in Milwaukee for the length of his stay here.