Milwaukee Bucks: Grading The Michael Beasley Trade
By Ti Windisch
What The Bucks Gave Up
Tyler Ennis just turned 22 in August, so he’s still very young. That means on the surface you can immediately tell this trade the Bucks made gave up on at least some potential–the hope with young players is that they’ll improve as they grow up in a basketball sense.
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The tricky thing about Tyler Ennis is that although watching him made you feel like he was doing a ton of growing, the numbers don’t really support that conclusion. He averaged 4.5 points and 2.1 assists in 14.2 minutes per game last season.
While it’s true that Ennis did get better, the improvement was marginal. His points per 36 minutes rose from 10.6 to 11.3. His assists per 36 minutes actually dropped. His PER went from 7.3 to 10.7, and his net rating went from -22 to -12.
Improvement is nice, but Ennis was on pace to take years to become even a replacement level player. In Milwaukee, it might’ve taken him even longer. The Bucks have Michael Carter-Williams and Matthew Dellavedova who will both play major minutes at point guard, plus the recent addition of Jason Terry meant even less minutes for Ennis.
Even in addition to that, Giannis Antetokounmpo is the real point guard in Milwaukee. So any minutes Ennis shared the floor with Giannis would’ve been spent playing off-ball, which isn’t exactly Ennis’ strong suit. He does a good job running the point, but he’s not great at working off of the ball.
Ennis made 36.4 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes last season. That’s a decent number, better than his 33.3 percent rate of making threes in general, but it’s hardly sharpshooter status. Dellavedova made 46.3 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes last year.
It seemed like due to the switch to Point Giannis and the addition of two new point guards that Ennis wouldn’t have had much of a role with the Milwaukee Bucks next season anyway. Where he fits in with Houston, which looks to play Patrick Beverley, James Harden and Pablo Prigioni at point, remains to be seen either.