Milwaukee Bucks: Will Thon Maker have his revenge in the playoffs?

Thon Maker will participate in the NBA Playoffs for the third time in three years, with the first two experiences with the Milwaukee Bucks being nothing short of remarkable. His requested change of scenery now sets up a potential revenge series, but how likely is that to occur?

Ian Fleming once scribed a famous line in his 1959 James Bond novel Goldfinger, where Auric Goldfinger proclaims to James Bond, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.”

Other less combative, more scientific versions have derived over the years, including once being a fluke, chance or even an accident, twice always being the coincidence, and three times being a pattern or trend.

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We are entering that third consecutive year of Thon Maker in the playoffs, a time where he has more than risen to the occasion in his rookie and sophomore years with the Milwaukee Bucks. Maker, who struggled immensely in his first two regular seasons, completely turned things around and was an X-factor in both first round playoff series.

In year three, the Bucks strangely enough find their previous playoff X-factor on the opposite side of the court, following a mid-season trade with upcoming first round opponent, the Detroit Pistons.

This begs the question: Will Playoff Thon return for a third year, this time to take revenge on the team that traded him away in February?

As with Maker’s first two years, he did not offer much evidence in his third regular season that major strides in his game have been made. After falling in and out of Mike Budenholzer’s bench rotation throughout the first few months of the 2018-19 season, Maker averaged only 11.7 minutes per game over the course of 35 games with the Bucks. After averaging 16.7 minutes per game the year prior, it was clear the Maker was not on an ascending path to more minutes early in his third season.

Enter the January trade request from Maker’s representatives possibly prompting the February trade that sent him to the Detroit Pistons for Stanley Johnson, who eventually was flipped for Nikola Mirotic.

A new team can mean new (or more) opportunities, something that Maker’s camp clearly sought. A change of scenery from a first place team to a developing team can be positive, if the primary motivations are geared toward finding more on-court opportunity in hopes of improving future contract value, all at the expense of a reduction in team success.

While this theory has been debated by Bucks fans (and pretty quickly forgotten in such a successful year), Maker and his representatives chose this course of action in January, and we now have over two months worth of games to see how the different situation has impacted Maker’s game.

Let’s start with the most basic: the box score stats. To make it a little less apples to oranges, we’ll use the per-36 minute statistics of the 2018-19 regular season, as Maker logged 19.4 minutes per game in the 29 games with Detroit, an increase from the aforementioned 11.7 minutes per game with Milwaukee.

Note: Per-36 minute stats for games played with Milwaukee will all be in parentheses.

Points Per 36 Minutes – 10.2 (14.4)
- Result: Decline in points with Detroit
Field Goals/Field Goals Attempted – 3.2/8.6 (5.2/11.8)
- Result: Decline in FG makes and attempts with Detroit
Field Goal Percentage – .373 (.440)
- Result: Decline in FG accuracy with Detroit
Three-Point Makes/Three-Point Attempts – 1.5/4.8 (2.3/6.9)
- Result: Decline in three-point makes and attempts with Detroit
Three-Point Percentage – .307 (.333)
- Result: Decline in three-point accuracy with Detroit
Rebounds – 6.8 (8.4)
- Result: Decline in rebounds with Detroit
Blocks – 2.1 (1.6)
- Result: Increase in blocks with Detroit
Personal Fouls – 3.2 (4.8)
- Result: Decrease in personal fouls with Detroit

There is surely an adjustment period with a new team, especially when playing in a completely different offensive system. That being said, early results from the per-36 alone (admittedly only part of the story on game impact) are not favorable for Maker taking advantage of more opportunity in a different uniform.

Digging one stat deeper into the most common advanced statistic, net rating, we can see Maker’s breakdown by each month of the season.

Net Rating by Month:

With Milwaukee

October: -1.0
November: 9.3
December: 10.3
January: -9.6

With Detroit

February: -9.0
March: -1.1
April: -3.5

The calculation of this advanced stat can be explained in simpler non-mathematical terms as the offensive and defensive success of the team’s lineup, measured over 100 possessions, when Maker is on the floor. The mixed results in Milwaukee were followed up with either a neutral or negative net rating in Detroit.

Plenty of factors go into this as well, including just the pure talent of the four other players in the lineup next to Maker. A net rating with Giannis Antetokounmpo next to you will usually end up a lot better than a net rating with Jon Leuer. That being said, this is still a relatively objective statistic that shows Maker’s new opportunity maybe hasn’t led to improved impact on games.

So, where will a potential Thon Maker revenge game or revenge series evolve from, if the stats say otherwise? There is one option that may play out, and that is on the defensive side of the ball.

Assistant Coach Sean Sweeney led the Bucks’ defense under Jason Kidd, and is now in Detroit helping lead Dwayne Casey’s defense. This hasn’t been as much of an in-season adjustment for Maker, and a familiar face had to be a welcome sign as he arrived in Detroit.

The Mike Budenholzer defense was surely not built around Thon Maker’s greatest talents of using his mobility and length to aggressively switch, trap, and chase. Sean Sweeney on the other hand has now had over two years of attempting to mold Maker into a defensive game changer. In this upcoming playoff series against the Bucks, the defensive end seems to be where his high energy could be best utilized.

Maker has provided good defensive energy in the limited time playing the four alongside Andre Drummond. Drummond allows Maker to roam a little more freely, not be pushed around by bigger centers, and adds a second shot blocker to the lineup. Add in the fact that Blake Griffin is dealing with left knee soreness and may not even suit up in the early games, and all of a sudden Maker’s defensive impact may be not just an added bonus for Detroit, but an absolute necessity.

One small problem with this is that he’d be tasked with covering the league’s MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, for much of these minutes if Griffin were to miss time. We don’t need a breakdown of stats or analytics to debate anything here; this is where the revenge of Playoff Thon likely dies.

While there is certainly a chance that Maker can have an impact in this playoff series, especially on the defensive side of the ball with his energy and shot blocking, the Bucks also have seen two-and-a-half years worth of practice with Maker to understand exactly how to take advantage of his weaknesses. Who better than Mike Budenholzer, Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez to know exactly how to manipulate this matchup?

Playoff Thon was nothing less than remarkable the previous two years and a revenge game/series definitely adds an extra wrinkle or possible storyline to the matchup, but this is rock-bottom of the Bucks concerns when matching up against Detroit.

Next. Milwaukee Bucks: 3 key stats about the Detroit Pistons. dark

At this point in his career, Maker is simply not a good NBA player, even with his increased opportunities that he so desired. While anything can happen in sports, or in a James Bond movie, Maker exacting revenge on the Bucks to impact the outcome of the playoff series seems about as far fetched as it gets.

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