Bobby Portis has probably been the Milwaukee Bucks player with the biggest swing this season.
After a slow start, he was heavily criticized by fans to the point that many of them asked for him to be traded. Yet, he ended up remaining part of the team beyond the trade deadline. Some weeks after the trade deadline passed, we could say that was for the best.
Portis has improved his game over this last month and has been key to some of the latest Bucks' victories. He has regained his spot as one of the most beloved players on the roster due to his energy, his charisma and, of course, good performances, which seem to be back after some poor stretches that he's finally leaving behind.
Analyzing how Bobby Portis has turned his season around for the Milwaukee Bucks
If we split his season at the All-Star break, his numbers tell the whole story by themselves. He was averaging 12.7 points and 6.9 rebounds per game until that point but has risen his production to 16.4 points and 8.5 rebounds since returning to action. Some of his best performances of the year have come in March, with the games against the LA Clippers and the Phoenix Suns standing out.
Some could argue Giannis Antetokounmpo missing some time makes these stats a bit noisy, and there's some truth to that.
Antetokounmpo has missed three games this month, and Portis has played a bigger role, boosting his numbers a bit more than they would otherwise be. However, despite all that, his efficiency has also improved, his shooting percentages have also improved and, just by looking at him, you can just tell something has changed.
But what is it? Has he changed his playstyle, or is he just taking the same shots but making them? Let's break down his game to figure out how he has made such a leap mid-season and how he's back to being one of the most important players on the team.
What was missing with Bobby Portis?
Before talking about what has changed, we need to talk about what wasn't working in the first half of the season. There are quite a few things.
First, under Adrian Griffin's coaching, the Bucks were a heavily offensive-minded team. This might look like a strange thing to spot on since Portis is also an offensive-minded player, so it would seem at first that Griffin's system would benefit him. However, it felt like the team was so good at offense that it didn't even need a player like Portis. In some way, he felt redundant.
Portis has been pretty important for the Bucks in the last few years because he was basically the only second-unit player who could consistently create a bucket for himself. There were some stretches where the offense really relied on him. Yet, with Griffin, despite him still being the only real scorer of the second unit, the team already had so much firepower that he didn't really add all that much. On the other end, however, he showed his cracks on defense more than ever because he was less protected than ever.
A lot of things can be said about Griffin's coaching, but his offense had a really good flow to it, and at his worst, you could really feel how Portis stopped it. He's more comfortable when he can post up for a few seconds and when he doesn't have to move the ball all that quickly. Sometimes he hurt that flow while he was looking for his shots. He forced it a bit too much, and he didn't let the scoring come to him naturally.
We'll put that into numbers next, but, in short, he basically added something the team already had and nothing else. While the Bucks were one of the best offenses in that span, they were also one of the worst defenses. It felt like a different kind of player was needed. Someone who could bring more balance to the team and didn't rely that heavily on his scoring was what they needed at that time.
A better fit
That balance didn't come from a roster change, though, but from a bench one. The team is still better at offense than it is at defense, as expected with the current roster, but Doc Rivers has fixed the rotation so the second unit doesn't just get torched every time. In fact, he's found ways to protect Portis in particular, making him blitz on screens so he can't be chased in the switch. The system doesn't expose him as easily and does need his scoring abilities a bit more often, creating an environment in which he doesn't feel out of place.
The biggest change has come in the ways he tries to score. Let's not get this wrong: he's still a player who is more comfortable when he has the time and the space to post up, but he's not boldly going at it anymore. His decision-making seems better; he's reading the defense and making the right play more often. That is huge because he's not just scoring more, as you would expect when Giannis is out, but he's being way more efficient.
Before the break, 50.2 percent of his 2-point baskets were unassisted, but that number has fallen to 35.4 percent since. And you don't even need to crunch the numbers to jump to the conclusion that he feels more integrated into the offense because you can just tell by looking at him. He's letting the game come to him.
He's cutting to the basket and getting assisted in the dunker spot. He waits for the right matchup to ask for the ball in the post. He's still creating some buckets for himself, but he's relying on the team's offense more, and that's helping his efficiency. That also means he's not forcing that much.
He can be a bit stubborn sometimes, and there are some possessions in which you just know he's going for the post-up no matter what, but he's cutting those off a little.
He's the second-ranked player in the NBA in post-up frequency only behind Denver's Nikola Jokic, and he used to try to score most of the time without really reading if it was the right play. That's not the case now. He was going for the shot in 66.7% of his post-ups before the All-Star, but is shooting just the 50% of them now. And you can tell that's a good thing, because his field goal percentages on those plays has risen from 47.5% to 52.2% (it was at 57.1% before his terrible shooting night against the Nets).
This means he's also more willing to pass the ball. One of his problems had to do with the fact the he was ball-hogging at times, and he tried to go for his basket despite it not necessarily being the best play. That has changed, too, because now 34.9 percent of his post-ups end up in a pass, while it was just 14.4 percent before the break.
He's even making an impact without scoring. He shot poorly against Brooklyn Thursday night, but he understood that and took a role as a rebounder and defender. He closed the game at center because he didn't get obsessed with scoring and found other ways to be productive, which was a great change for a player who used to be borderline unplayable when he wasn't feeling it.
In short, he's being more contained, but in a good way. He's actually shooting more than he used to because he has been playing without Giannis Antetokounmpo lately, but he's also selecting those shots much better. He's not only scoring more, but he's doing it more efficiently and he's looking more confident in his game.
Now, he just needs to keep it going. He's not the player you would want to take the biggest shots, but he's the kind that, on a good night, can really swing a playoff game with his scoring. So, if the Milwaukee Bucks want to go deep in the postseason, they will probably need Portis to extend this stretch as much as he can.