Milwaukee Bucks: Expectations for Sandro Mamukelashvili’s rookie year

It’s been some time since the Milwaukee Bucks got production in their rotation from a rookie. It makes sense, too. They haven’t had a first round pick since Donte DiVincenzo in 2018 and they’ve been a contending team since that time as well. Most contending teams don’t have the room for late first round picks and especially second-rounders in their rotations, so it’s hard for them to find minutes.

Last season, the Bucks also didn’t have the benefit of having their own G League affiliate so they were forced to send their three rookies (Jordan Nwora, Sam Merrill, and Mamadi Diakite) to various other affiliates and they had varying degrees of success.

This season, the Bucks are expected to carry two rookies, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Georgios Kalaitzakis, on their roster as either a standard contract or two-way player. As of now, Mamukelashvili is signed to a two-way deal but the league kept the rules from last season in removing the cap on how many games a two-way player can play for his team, but will not be eligible for the playoffs.

There should be not any expectation that he’d be playing in the playoffs, but because Mamukelashvili is on a two-way contract doesn’t necessarily mean that he’ll receive fewer minutes than Kalaitzakis or won’t play.

Expectations for Milwaukee Bucks’ Sandro Mamukelashvili’s rookie season

The ability for Mamukelashvili to play all 82 games will be key as the Bucks could potentially use him more than we initially expected and especially so for a player taken 54th overall in the 2021 NBA Draft.

Now we shouldn’t expect that he’ll become a key member of the rotation, but after waiving Mamadi Diakite, there could be minutes to be had in the frontcourt rotation. Bucks general manager Jon Horst said as much in his sit-down interview with The Athletic’s Eric Nehm (subscription required) that “he’ll always give us some minutes there” in reference to the potential frontcourt depth problem, but also clarifying that “it’s always a tall order” for a rookie to play big minutes and develop.

It’s clear that the Bucks believe in Mamukelashvili and think he could give them some minutes this season in a pinch. If we look at his Summer League performance, we can get a sense of what kind of value Mamukelashvili could bring to the rotation. In five games, the 22-year-old averaged 11.2 points, 8.6 rebounds, 2.2 assists, and 1.5 steals in 26.5 minutes per game. Of those 8.6 boards per game, nearly half of them were offensive boards, he really showed an ability to crash the offensive glass and that was something that the Bucks made a focus of their offensive approach last season.

Mamukelashvili showed an incredibly unique skill set that we didn’t get to see as much as we would have liked in Summer League, specifically in regards to his ball-handling and passing ability. What we saw in Summer League with him crashing the glass and getting buckets around the basket is more of an indicator of what we should see if he cracks the back-end of the rotation.

However, when he gets sent to the Wisconsin Herd, we should see a more expanded version of his offensive game, closer to the numbers he put up in his final season at Seton Hall where he was the Big East Player of the Year. It’ll give Mamukelashvili the opportunity to develop the parts of his game that won’t he won’t get as much of a chance to use in his NBA minutes right away.

It would be doing a player like Mamukelashvili an incredible disservice to only have him crash the offensive boards and shoot the 3, which he didn’t knock down at a high clip in Summer League. He showed a unique ability to handle the ball both in the half-court and in transition which allowed his playmaking and passing to thrive, something I’d love to see him get to develop further in the G League.

Make no mistake, there shouldn’t be anyone expecting Mamukelashvili to make an impact right away and make an All-Rookie team. But if he can tread water in his limited NBA minutes to begin his career while developing the unique aspects of his game, then that’s a win for his rookie season.

It seems likely that Mamukelashvili will get more playing time right away than Kalaitzakis and have the chance to make an impact on the Milwaukee Bucks because of the lack of depth with the bigs as opposed to the wings.