Milwaukee Bucks: Bobby Portis is still finding his early rhythm

If there is one player whose performance has encapsulated the Milwaukee Bucks‘ early-season struggles, it would be Bobby Portis. After missing the entirety of the preseason with a hamstring injury that he suffered in the team’s open scrimmage, he also missed the opening five games of the regular season.

His return to the lineup was much needed as the Bucks had been missing any semblance of a big man without Portis and Brook Lopez. While it’s been nice to have his energy back in the lineup and have one of their regular frontcourt rotation players back, it has been a bit of a struggle for the fan favorite before hopefully breaking out of that slump against the Sixers.

That being said, it has been six games and he is still working his way through what is essentially his version of the preseason. But let’s go through Portis’ limited sample to this point and see if there’s anything we can take away from it.

Bobby Portis is still finding his legs early in the season for the Milwaukee Bucks

Just taking a look at Portis’ numbers to begin the season, you can tell it hasn’t been a great start for him to this point. He’s averaging 11.8 points, 7.8 rebounds (more on that later), and over a block (also more on that) per game. It’s a relatively modest stat line, but the concerning part is Portis’ shooting.

He is posting a 45.5 percent true shooting, the third-worst on the team (not including Georgios Kalaitzakis) and that would be, quite easily, the worst of his career. It’s a good thing that the NBA season is longer than six games!

One positive (for me, at least) is that Portis has come out of the gate aggressive. The Bucks could use extra scoring from just about anyone right now without Khris Middleton and Portis has taken some of the scoring burden upon himself. Per 36 minutes, Portis is averaging the third most shot attempts with 18.4 per game.

He is shooting around 31 percent on almost four attempts a game and although I did say fans should expect some regression in this area for Portis, it won’t be this bad for the whole season. Portis is shooting 18.2 percent on around two open 3-point jumpers per game (he was at 37.5 percent on those looks last season), per NBA.com/stats.

But Portis is more than his scoring, of course. One of the more notable numbers for Portis so far has been his rebounding. He’s averaging 11.5 rebounds per 36 minutes, right around what he averaged last year, but it’s his offensive rebounds that have jumped this year. He has an offensive rebound rate of 12.5 percent and the Bucks offensive rebounding rate as a team jumps by over 9 percent when Portis is on the court, per Cleaning the Glass.

Perhaps more pertinent to Bucks fans at the moment, although his defensive rebounding rate is down, their rate as a team is better when Portis is on the floor. It’s something I’ve talked about before but although individual rebounding numbers are nice, the more important figure is whether or not a team rebounds well overall when a player is on the court and that’s something the Bucks were not last season in Portis’ minutes.

He has also taken on some of the rim protection responsibilities that have been left available without Brook Lopez. He is averaging a career-high in blocks per game at the moment and Cleaning the Glass has Portis at a 2.4 percent block rate, which is the highest of his career and puts him in the 68th percentile for big men, right around the same as Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

He is also averaging the most steals per game in his career and posting his highest steal rate. He has a similar steal rate to big names like Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Deandre Ayton (all in the 80th percentile or higher). One of our primary goals for Portis was to become a reliable defender and so far, he has proven to have taken a step in this aspect.

It hasn’t been all doom and gloom for Portis early in the season. His shots may not be falling, but he has found other ways to impact the game and still brings his trademark energy. Portis’ shots will begin to fall soon, especially when there is more space open for him with Middleton and Lopez back in the lineup to take attention away from him.

Perhaps all he needs are some more “BOB-BY” chants to get his shot going once the Bucks conclude their road trip.