Milwaukee Bucks: Mirza Teletovic 2017-18 season preview

What does Teletovic offer?

Teletovic is a three-point specialist, through and through. While he didn’t experience the same highs as he has shown consistently in years past, we saw the electricity and excitement Teletovic could cause in the several nights he had his shot on target throughout the year.

As such, the threat of Teletovic is something opposing defenses had to respect whenever he was on the floor, regardless of how effective he had been shooting the ball heading into a given game. Even in a down shooting season, Teletovic was one of seven Bucks to rank out as a net positive when he hit the floor as he posted a +3.4 net rating, per NBA.com/stats.

To probably an even bigger surprise, the team defended better with Teletovic on the court by a considerable margin than without him (a drop off of -4.8 points per 100 possessions, to be specific).

That certainly doesn’t line up with what we regularly see of Teletovic on that end, being that he’s very limited in his lateral movement, which gets more exaggerated in a defensive scheme as mobile and aggressive as the Bucks have deployed in every season under Jason Kidd’s watch.

But with Teletovic getting most of his run going up against opposing second units or a mix and match of starters and reserves, it’s been to his benefit as his impact on the team significantly outweighed his individual performance and struggles last year.