The worst of Mirotic
Mirotic wasn’t immune from the off shooting night during his regular season appearances after joining the Bucks, which included an infamous 0-of-6, 2-point outing in the team’s St. Patrick’s Day loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
But it was after returning from his fractured thumb at the start of the Bucks’ playoff run that his shooting struggles came into focus, all of which came to a head during the team’s Eastern Conference Finals clash with the Toronto Raptors.
In his 14 playoff appearances this season, Mirotic averaged just 9.5 points per game on shooting splits of .376/.289/.821. To make matters worse, the offensive influence Mirotic held dissipated in the postseason as Milwaukee’s performed +4.9 points per 100 possessions better in the 432 minutes he was on the bench versus the 298 minutes he was on the court.
Of course, that’s not touching on the defensive issues Mirotic raised at that point as he tallied the highest defensive rating of any Bucks player that saw the floor throughout the Conference Finals.
All of those factors contributed to Mirotic not only losing his place within the Bucks’ starting five midway through the series, but eventually falling out of the rotation as he logged just over nine minutes in Game 5 and was a DNP-CD in the decisive Game 6.