The Semi Ojeleye era with the Milwaukee Bucks has gotten off to anything but a good start.
After coming aboard in free agency, the forward has struggled to find his footing in Milwaukee, which could partially be attributed to some unfortunate injuries. Ojeleye has been hindered by a calf injury that has forced him to miss time on numerous occasions, and it can be challenging for a player to find a rhythm when dealing with a nagging injury like that.
Throughout the 12 games that he has played, Ojeleye is averaging 3.2 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 0.3 assists in a career-high 19.7 minutes per game. Aside from his rebounding, which has been a welcoming boost, Ojeleye has failed to make much of an impact despite receiving the most playing time on average in his entire career thus far. Although single-game +/- often fails to tell the whole story, Ojeleye currently has the worst on the team at -86, per NBA.com/stats. Not all of that falls onto his broad shoulders, but given his struggles, it is fitting.
The biggest reason behind Semi Ojeleye’s struggles with the Milwaukee Bucks
Although his struggles cannot be boiled down to one single factor, Ojeleye’s outside shooting has certainly been concerning early on. The 27-year-old is shooting just 7-of-32 on the season, which is a grueling 21.9 percent from 3-point range. That is the eighth-worst percentage in the league among players that have shot at least 30 triples on the season and the second-fewest makes in that same department. Given how much the Bucks emphasize 3-point shooting, this has been an incredibly troublesome development throughout Ojeleye’s first dozen games with the franchise.
To make matters worse, all of Ojeleye’s perimeter looks have been fairly open. The forward is just 1-of-5 on 3-pointers where the closest defender is somewhere between four-to-six feet away, and a brutal 6-of-27 when he has six or more feet of space. Numbers like that will simply not get the job done, even if the Bucks brought Ojeleye in for his defense more than his offense. He has been a liability with the ball on the perimeter all season, and the Bucks desperately need him to flip the switch if he will continue to play such a prominent role in the rotation.
Part of what makes this entire slump so puzzling is that Ojeleye has proven to be a solid shooter in the past. Over the previous two seasons with the Boston Celtics, he knocked down 37.2 percent of his triples on 2.3 attempts per game. There is some semblance of a serviceable 3-point shooter in Ojeleye, as evidenced by a three-game stretch in November where he shot 6-of-7 from distance, which initially looked like a turning point for him. However, that proved to be a mirage as he has hit just one 3-pointer in five games since then.
If there is any team that can unlock Ojeleye’s shooting, it is the Bucks. Due to their reliance on the 3-pointer, everyone on the roster has the green light to shoot it whenever. Ojeleye will continue to do just that, and given the endless amount of open looks he will get, they are bound to start falling at some point. If so, it would be a massive lift for Milwaukee’s struggling unit.
The Ojeleye experiment has been an interesting one thus far, and hopefully things start trending upward over the next few months.