Milwaukee Bucks: Brook Lopez could be in line for a career shooting year

Having landed in a new and improved situation in free agency, Brook Lopez could be set up for a career-best shooting season with the Milwaukee Bucks.

With a long, successful and highly productive career under his belt already, Brook Lopez’s decision to sign with the Milwaukee Bucks this summer should still lead to some new and intriguing opportunities for the veteran center.

Firstly, it comes with the promise of playoff basketball, something which Lopez has only experienced twice across a 10-year career in which he’s averaged close to 20 points per game.

Not only should playing for the Bucks make Lopez a lock to make the playoffs in the East, though, but it will also give him a very realistic chance of advancing beyond the first round for the first time.

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Another potential opportunity to come from his move to the Bucks is to further build upon one of the more recent skills he’s added to his repertoire, and one that could be essential in maximizing Lopez’s impact and extending his career over the coming years.

Having attempted just 31 three-pointers across the first eight seasons of his NBA career, Lopez has attempted a whopping 712 three-point attempts over his two most recent seasons split between the Nets and Lakers.

To put that volume of three-point shooting in perspective, no player currently on the Bucks’ roster has attempted as many shots from deep over the past two seasons.

Lopez had always been one of the more confident, efficient and effective mid-range shooters among NBA big men, so in many ways stretching out his range was a natural and long overdue progression.

The 30-year-old has shown great comfort and confidence in expanding his range, yet the efficiency of his mid-range game has yet to truly translate to his shots from a few steps further away from the basket.

Last year in Los Angeles, Lopez knocked down 34.5 percent of his triples, after making a similar 34.6 percent the year prior in Brooklyn. Although those numbers compare poorly to sharp-shooting NBA wings and guards, the fact that a player of Lopez’s size — who also possesses a more traditional center’s skill-set — takes and makes as many threes in the first place provides its own obvious value.

Per Cleaning the Glass, 39 percent of Lopez’s total shot diet with the Lakers last season came from beyond the arc, building on his 30 percent frequency from the previous year in Brooklyn. That places him firmly in the upper echelon of three-point shooting bigs, as those numbers placed him in the 80th and 76th percentile respectively across those two seasons.

Playing Lopez affords a team a best of both worlds possibility, as they can lean on his polished post-scoring and traditional size around the basket when needed, while he’s also capable of stepping out on to the perimeter if the matchup dictates the need to do so.

Most exciting about the potential fit of Lopez in Milwaukee, though, is the caliber and skill-set of players he’ll be paired with. In recent years, and certainly since becoming a more willing three-point shooter, Lopez has played for lottery-bound teams where he was guaranteed to be one of the primary focuses of the opposing defense.

With the Bucks, that won’t be the case. Giannis Antetokounmpo is comfortably better than any player Lopez has ever played with in the NBA, while Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe will also make him a member of a supporting cast unlike any he’s been a part of since a post-prime Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett teamed up in Brooklyn.

When the Bucks get out and run in transition via Antetokounmpo or Bledsoe, Lopez will have ample opportunity to assume his preferred three-point shooting position, as he trails for above the break attempts.

In such a scenario, Lopez could be joined by a combination of more deadly shooters on the perimeter too, with Middleton, Malcolm Brogdon and Tony Snell all potentially commanding more attention than him in those kind of scenarios.

As a result, the quality of Lopez’s three-point attempts should far exceed what he’s been working with over the past two years, and give him every chance to add some welcome efficiency to his existing willingness to let fly from distance.

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For the Bucks, Lopez taking those shots and simply keeping the opposing defense honest enough to create more space for Antetokounmpo and Co. to thrive is all that’s required of the veteran. If he can start to make even more of those attempts, though, the Bucks’ offense should only become all the more potent as a result.

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