Milwaukee Bucks 2016-17 season review: Tony Snell

The Worst of Snell

Although he was certainly efficient and played his role well, Snell didn’t actually score all that many points in his time with the Bucks. The threat of his shooting opened up space for Milwaukee, but Snell himself scored 8.5 points per game.

The spacing benefits are visible on the floor most of the time, but the advanced metrics don’t bear out Snell being a positive presence for Milwaukee. During the regular season the Bucks were outscored by 1.2 points per 100 possessions with Snell on the floor, while they outscored opponents by 3.0 points per 100 possessions with Snell sitting.

Out of Bucks to log at least 500 minutes, only Michael Beasley, Jabari Parker and John Henson cause the Bucks to perform worse according to net rating. Some of those numbers get noisy because Snell is often playing against starters, but the fact remains that Milwaukee often struggled with him on the floor in the regular season.

To his credit, the playoff stats tell a different story about Snell. The Bucks outscored Toronto by 1.0 points per 100 possessions with Snell and got beat by 4.0 points per 100 possessions without him.

The other thing about Snell’s game that can be seen as a weakness is that he has a tendency to disappear some nights. There were 20 games this season where Snell logged at least 20 minutes and failed to score more than five points. He only scored more than 14 points seven times all year.

That’s the price of being a role player willing to give up touches, but after some losses this season it was easy to wish Snell had taken a few more threes and gotten the Bucks going at some point.