Milwaukee Bucks: Revisiting Marvin Williams’ 2019-20 season so far – Where Marvin left off
Long before Williams arrived to Milwaukee in early February, Williams was already used to having to make a number of adjustments while a member of the Charlotte Hornets.
In light of the Hornets pivoting to their full-on rebuild, Williams was relegated to coming off the bench going into the start of the season for the first time in his Hornets stint. Williams’ downsized role also led to him seeing the floor for the fewest minutes of his career as he had averaged 19.7 minutes per game in Charlotte.
Despite the role change, Williams still proved to be a productive cog and put forth some of the best marks of his 15-year NBA career across his final few months in Charlotte. That included hitting 37.6 percent of his threes, compiling a 59.3 true shooting percentage while averaging 6.7 points per game on his limited scoring opportunities while in Charlotte.
That, along with his steady team defending, surely made him such an enticing addition for the Bucks when Williams and his agent were looking for a new home once his departure from Charlotte was on the wall around the time of the trade deadline.
Likewise, Williams had identified the Bucks as an ideal landing spot for his services where he could come in and play a straight-forward role for the league’s best squad as he told the following to Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel not long after his arrival:
"“What these guys are doing right now is incredible,” Williams said. “I’m not here to ruffle anybody’s feathers, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. I just want to be a little piece to what they’re trying to accomplish. Obviously, winning a championship is their goal and it’s certainly been mine throughout the course of my career, so this is a great opportunity for me to make that happen.”"
It was upon arriving to Milwaukee where Williams stepped right up to act as the backup 4 behind Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo and was thrown into the fire, taking on a number of challenging defensive assignments such as Pascal Siakam across his first month with the Bucks. And Williams made a decent impact along the way by assuming a +6.4 net rating in his 203 minutes so far with the Bucks, per NBA.com/stats.
But what didn’t travel with Williams in his first-ever midseason move was his knockdown shooting, especially from deep. While it was certainly a small sample size, Williams had gone 8-for-27 from 3-point range (29.6 percent) and averaging 4 points per game while in Milwaukee.
And it’s Williams’ offense that will soon be among the big questions that he’ll have to address while in Orlando over the next coming months.