If there’s one thing that holds especially true in the NBA today, it’s that you can never have enough shooting on your roster. The more good-to-great shooters you have, the more space is opened up in the paint for easy shots at the rim. This is even more important for the Milwaukee Bucks, who have arguably the best scorer at the rim in the entire league in Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Having great spacing is imperative for Antetokounmpo so the opposing team can’t throw multiple bodies at him on a drive and make things difficult for him. Thankfully, most of the Bucks roster can be relied upon to at least shoot league average from behind the arc. However, with the loss of arguably their best 3-point shooter in Bryn Forbes, there’s more importance on some of the role players to come in and hit shots.
The Bucks added a few guys who could help fill the void left by Forbes in addition to some players already on the roster. There are definitely going to be some good battles during the Bucks’ shooting competitions at pregame shootarounds and practices with the group of shooting the Bucks have assembled.
Some names will be left off this top six, but that isn’t to say they’re bad shooters, just that I want to see more from them, or they aren’t quite as good as the top names on the team. With that being said, let us rank the six best shooters on the 2021-22 Bucks.
Ranking the best shooters on the Milwaukee Bucks: No. 6 – Bobby Portis
It’s a bit odd to have a guy who shot 47 percent from deep last year as the sixth-best shooter on the roster, but here we are! The biggest thing for me with Bobby Portis is that I want to see him do it for a little longer.
Over his last four seasons, Portis has shot 39.1 percent on three attempts per game. It’s a strong sample, and it’s a good bet that Portis is officially a very good shooter, but I want to see him do it at a consistent rate. In that four-year sample, Portis’ 3-point percentages have gone 35.9 (2017-18), 39.3 (2018-19), 35.8 (2019-20), 47.1 (2020-21).
It’s a fluctuation from around league average to well above, but if he can get his floor to about 38 percent, then that would be a huge testament to the work Portis has put into becoming a 3-point threat. Keep in mind, Portis only took a total of 63 triples in two college seasons and 52 in his rookie year. It’s still a relatively new skill for him.
Ranking the best shooters on the Milwaukee Bucks: No. 5 – Grayson Allen
As one of our candidates to fill Forbes’ shooter role, Grayson Allen has the ability to really have an impact on the defending champs’ roster this season. While I’ve made the comparison to how similar his athletic profile is to Donte DiVincenzo and Pat Connaughton, Allen is easily the best shooter of the group.
Although his rookie season was a bit of a dip in his 3-point percentage (32.3 percent), the last two seasons are much more of what we expected of Allen coming out of college. Across 88 games, Allen has shot 39.5 percent on nearly five attempts per game. Going back to his time at Duke, Allen shot 38.2 percent (6.7 attempts per game) in his final three years.
He’s also developing a bit of a pull-up 3-point game, shooting over 35 percent on 1.7 attempts per game last season, per NBA.com/stats. It was the first season of Allen’s three-year career that he’s shot over one pull-up triple per game.
Ranking the best shooters on the Milwaukee Bucks: No. 4 – Rodney Hood
Rodney Hood has been a pretty consistent 3-point threat for his whole career, shooting 36.7 percent on over four attempts per game. Even going back to college, where he shot nearly 40 percent on over four attempts in two college seasons.
The biggest worry is how his shooting fell off last season, his first after his Achilles injury. In 55 games, Hood shot just 30.1 percent from three, by far the lowest mark of his career. Shooting ability is something that should be able to recover from an injury like that, and the hope is that the second year after the injury will turn things around for him.
Hood has been a solid mid-range shooter as well, with the ability to make shots on the catch as well as off the dribble. The versatility in his shot-making put him ahead of Portis, Allen, and some others not in the top six.
Ranking the best shooters on the Milwaukee Bucks: No. 3 – Jordan Nwora
I know I said I wanted to see it more from Portis, and Hood has had a much longer career than Jordan Nwora, but I can’t deny what we’ve seen from him in his lone NBA season as well as his college career. I wouldn’t argue if you wanted to put him lower because there’s such a small sample, but I believe in Nwora’s shooting ability a lot.
The whole reason why Bucks fans are clamoring for Nwora to play more is that his shooting has been so impressive that they believe it makes up for what he lacks as a defender. In his first NBA season, Nwora shot over 45 percent from behind the arc on 2.1 attempts per game. Around 45 percent of his shot attempts were triples and he made them at a very high level. In college, Nwora shot 39.4 percent on nearly five attempts per game, with his final seasons being over six attempts a night.
The most astounding thing was that Nwora shot over 68 percent on his pull-up triples last year (22 attempts). Obviously, that’s not something that will continue, but it shows he already has a good feel for his pull-up game, and that’s huge for a young player.
Ranking the best shooters on the Milwaukee Bucks: No. 2 – George Hill
George Hill has been shooting the three at a high level in the NBA for a long, long time. In 13 NBA seasons, Hill has shot over 38 percent from deep on over three attempts per game. In fact, there are only 13 guards in NBA history that have shot a better percentage from distance in as many games as Hill has, per Stathead.
Even in what was considered a down year overall for Hill, he still shot nearly 39 percent from deep over 30 games. At 35-years-old, Hill hasn’t lost his ability to spread the floor and knock down tripels at a high clip. Bucks fans saw that on full display in the 2019-20 season, where he hit 46 percent of his attempts that year and helped get him Sixth Man of the Year votes.
It doesn’t even dip that far in the playoffs as it does for so many other shooters, with Hill shooting 37.2 percent on 3.4 attempts per game. He has four seasons in his career over 40 percent from three and five over 38 percent.
Ranking the best shooters on the Milwaukee Bucks: No. 1 – Khris Middleton
Although you could argue any combination from #2 to #6 for which order they should be in, there’s zero debate about who the best shooter on the Bucks is, from both 3-point and mid-range attempts. Let’s be honest, any player who twice flirts with a 50-40-90 season on the volume of shots that Khris Middleton takes is an elite shooter.
What makes it even more impressive is how tough some of the shots he takes are, especially in the midrange. Middleton is the conductor of the tough shot express, and we saw it over and over during the Bucks championship run. I won’t go over Middleton’s percentages, just enjoy some Middleton magic.
Middleton proved to everyone that he could be the second guy on a championship team, and hit shooting came alive multiple times for breakout performances when the Bucks needed him most.
There are a few other shooters that could have been on here, but players like DiVincenzo and Connaughton need to do it more consistently before they can be here with the likes of Middleton.