Milwaukee Bucks: Analyzing Khris Middleton/Jayson Tatum matchup
By Adam McGee
Defense
Jayson Tatum is the kind of defensive terror that isn’t very frequently found among a rookie class.
Throughout the course of his first season in the NBA, Tatum has demonstrated a positional awareness and basketball IQ that has allowed him to fit in seamlessly as a key cog in the league’s best defensive unit.
Beyond that, Tatum is also able to channel his physical attributes into making game-changing plays on the defensive end. For example, in a January 6 win against the Nets, Tatum became the first teenager since Kevin Garnett to finish with six blocks and three steals in a single game.
Prior to the season even starting, Celtics coach Brad Stevens highlighted some of the defensive strengths he saw in Tatum’s game while speaking to Jay King of MassLive.
"“He’s very savvy and very long. He uses his length. His arms are out and he gets his hands on balls and deflects passes and discourages drives just because of his length.”"
Khris Middleton is taller and longer than he often gets credit for, but Tatum has the right tools to be able to trouble him. Middleton’s love of fadeaway jumpers isn’t always popular with Bucks fans, but there’s a real possibility that Tatum’s length could force him into a greater volume of them in this series.
On the other side of the matchup, while Middleton was once renowned as one of the league’s very best 3-and-D specialists, there can be little doubting that his defense has fallen off over the last couple of seasons.
Some of those problems may be down to the positions he can find himself in within the Bucks’ troublesome defensive scheme, others could be attributed to a slight loss of foot speed or even lapses in attitude or focus — Middleton has developed a habit of not getting back when he gets frustrated with a lack of calls.
If the Bucks are to have any chance of the upset in this series, they’re going to need Middleton to lock in and find some of his defensive skill of old, particularly to slow Tatum down from behind the arc.