The Philadelphia 76ers have been dealing with a spate of injuries. Top stars Joel Embiid, James Harden and Tyrese Maxey missed time due to injuries, which has forced others to step up.
The player who has taken biggest advantage of this opportunity has been Shake Milton. The veteran out of SMU, who has been in and out of the rotation for the Sixers, is averaging 21.3 points, 6 assists and 5.3 rebounds while shooting 54.7% from the floor and 45.5% from deep over his last eight games starting for Philadelphia.
With the return of Harden set for Monday against the Houston Rockets, one has to wonder what happens with Milton’s role on the team as the Sixers get healthy. Per Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer, coach Doc Rivers said Milton will have a spot in the rotation:
“We’re deep,” Rivers said. “So everybody is not going to play. But certain guys will and Shake (Milton) will be one of them.”
“There’s always a competition going on, a competition for minutes” Rivers said, “and Shake has proven that he should play. Hopefully that continues, you know? Can he play this role with shorter minutes? That’s what happens.
“Guys get a lot of minutes and they can play. They get shorter minutes and sometimes they can’t. But he will be able to. Shake is just another guard. We know we can use him, so that’s really good.”
The big question will be whether Milton can keep up this production when he returns to his reserve role. In 11 games off the bench, he’s shooting 18.2% from deep and averaged 4.9 points per game. The Sixers will have to hope they can still get the same type of production out of him as Philadelphia gets healthy.
[mm-video type=playlist id=01f09kz5ecxq9bp57b player_id=01f5k5xtr64thj7fw2 image=https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[listicle id=71824]
[lawrence-related id=71814,71801,71810]