Milwaukee Bucks: Tim Frazier offered a training camp lifeline

After an underwhelming season with the Washington Wizards, the Milwaukee Bucks have offered Tim Frazier a chance to return to form and prove his worth in the NBA.

As the Milwaukee Bucks finalized their training camp roster on Saturday, it was announced that familiar faces Shabazz Muhammad and Christian Wood had signed their previously reported deals, but perhaps more interesting was the inclusion of a player who doesn’t have previous Bucks ties.

Now preparing for what will be his fifth season in the NBA, former Penn State point guard Tim Frazier will join Muhammad, Wood and the non-guaranteed Tyler Zeller in battling it out for the Bucks’ final roster spot heading into the 2018-19 season.

Since coming into the league undrafted back in 2014, Frazier has worked hard to carve out a niche, and had been progressing nicely on that front up until a season of struggles with the Washington Wizards last year.

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Frazier broke into the NBA following a rookie season that saw him land D-League All-Star and MVP honors.

Starting the following season as a bit-part end of rotation guard in Portland, Frazier eventually landed in New Orleans with the Pelicans, where he was afforded the opportunity to show what he could do in a much more extended role.

Frazier averaged 29.3 minutes per game in 16 contests to finish the 2015-16 season, posting impressive averages of 13.1 points, 7.5 assists, 4.4 rebounds and 1.4 steals, while shooting 45 percent from the field and 41.9 percent from three-point range.

With that late season burst acting as something of an audition for the Pelicans, it led to Frazier signing a multi-year contract and playing the most minutes of any season in his career to date in the following year with New Orleans. In the 2016-17 season, Frazier averaged 23.5 minutes per game across 65 games, including 35 starts, while averaging 7.1 points, 5.2 assists and 2.7 rebounds per game.

Having solidified his status as a reliable and capable backup, Frazier was acquired by the Wizards, who sent a second round pick to the Pelicans in order to find suitable cover for All-Star John Wall. What seemed like a great fit on paper, and should have been an excellent opportunity for Frazier considering Wall’s injury problems, failed to materialize as such, though.

Frazier played in 59 games for the Wizards, but saw his minutes fall to 14.2 per contest, while sub-40 percent shooting from the field played a significant factor in his scoring dropping to just 3.0 points per game.

Tomas Satoransky became the man to thrive in the role Frazier was expected to fill, and the disappointment in what the 27-year-old had to offer can likely be best summed up by a piece by Jake Whitacre of Bullets Forever titled: “The Wizards turned Tim Frazier into Brandon Jennings. Not in a good way.”

Of course, considering the Bucks’ own bizarre dalliance with Jennings last season, that makes Frazier’s place on Milwaukee’s training camp roster all the more fitting.

Having said that, in spite of also having his own history of an achilles injury, Frazier represents a very different profile of guard to Jennings, and a player who certainly could still return to a consistent and productive rotation role in the NBA.

Where Jennings has always employed a shoot-first approach to his game, Frazier is a much more natural playmaker, who even in down years has created for teammates with care and efficiency.

Frazier has a career average of 8.1 assists per 36 minutes, while he has never finished a season with an assist-to-turnover ratio lower than 2.4. Even better again, Frazier’s assist-to-turnover ratio came in at 3.24 in 2016-17 with the Pelicans, while it improved further to 3.4 in a year of struggles elsewhere in his game with the Wizards last season.

As a point of comparison, no guard with a regular spot in Milwaukee’s rotation has even reached the efficiency of three assists to every single turnover in either of the past two seasons. On a Bucks team that’s going to have an even greater emphasis on passing and ball movement under Mike Budenholzer, it’s safe to say there’s certainly a place for the kind of responsible yet incisive guard play that Frazier brings to the table.

At just 6’0″, Frazier is undoubtedly on the small side, and his shooting leaves plenty to be desired, but he’s earned a reputation as a hard-worker and a relentless competitor capable of overcoming those challenges.

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The focus may be on others throughout Milwaukee’s upcoming training camp battle, but Frazier may be the most proven of those under consideration, and that could prove decisive when the final decisions are made.

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