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Friendly Bucks fan with a question.
Has Milsap ever logged regular starter minutes at SF?
Do you guys feel he can play all his minutes at SF and be effective?

thanks

btw - you have a great young core! should be fun to watch.

He's played there off and on his whole career. Back in the day he worked hard and cared, he was capable of it. Now, I don't think he is.

Hasn't logged starter minutes at sf, and not really well equipped for that to be his primary role. He has range though, and can certainly play spot minutes at the three and more, depending on matchups.

He's undersized a bit at the 4 (especially his standing reach). But he's strong and not very light. His defense isn't great, so he gets beat by 3s too much to really play him there. He could try to make matchup problems on the other side of the floor if you have two other bigs that can post up, and then dump the ball into whoever the defense gives you. But he can't guard the 3, and I hate to see him try.

He doesn't have the range on offense or the lateral quickness on defense to play the 3 effectively IMO.

Millsap is statistically a much better defender than he is often given credit for, probably because of the poor team defense and his own inefficiency as a low post defender. Paul's individual defensive composite score and defensive rating are outstanding, often in the top 10 in the whole NBA. Players statistically comparable to Millsap over the past five years include Anderson Varejao, Jermaine O'Neal, Kevin Garnett, Kevin Love, Pau Gasol, and Dirk Nowitski. Millsap has even led all power forwards in steals before.

Some interesting factoids from weareutahjazz.com about the 2012 season, in which Millsap played a lot of minutes at SF:

...all movement areas Paul is great. 37th best in the NBA on isolation plays, #24 off the screen and #55 when put into pick and roll guarding the roller. He also did a really respectable job dealing with stretch 4’s only allowing 33% three point shooting on the spot ups.
His isolation defense is amazing. Players shot 28% against him and he forced 11% of possessions into turnovers and didn’t give up a single and 1. This is not new last year players shot 36% against him and he forced 17% of the plays into turnovers.

Now the bad:
In the same year, Millsap was 141st in the NBA on post up defense, allowing 49% shooting.

Conclusion:
Paul Millsap can do spot duty at the SF, but really is at his best against stretch 4's. In fact, he might be the best defender in the league not named Lebron at guarding stretch 4's. He really struggles against length down low and actually performs better statistically against SF's.

Millsap's offense has always been good. He is one of only eight players to have averaged over 16 points, 8 boards, 2.5 assists, and 50% shooting in the last two years. Stats geeks love Millsap because he is highly efficient.

I believe Millsap should be a 6th man who defends stretch 4's and SF's who play big (like the Derrick Williams types).

That was a really interesting and accurate analysis by Winglish.

Bucks fan, trust me you don't want Milsap. Milsap is a trap player. He is a hard worker and does well with what he has, and that gives him a good rep, but at the end of the day he is ultimately undersized and pretty mediocre. I wouldn't want Milsap as the PF on my team, and especially not at SF.... Well, unless he can finally stomach that he isn't a starter.. He would be a nice backup at PF

That Millsap's 2 year stats still look very efficient even after his most recent year shows how good he can be when he's mentally in it to win it. I hope he can get somewhere where he'll be allowed and motivated to play David West style, instead of this sad, extremely depressing version of Milsap that we had to watch last year.

Millsap can play the 3 in very specific match-up situations, but would get eaten alive logging starter's minutes there. Unfortunately, he also gets eaten alive by almost anyone at the 4 down low.

You guys rock thanks for all the quick thorough responses. Go Jazz!

eagle13 wrote:You guys rock thanks for all the quick thorough responses. Go Jazz!

I would Millsap could play SF if he lost 30 pounds which would add to his athleticism and he's a great back up PF, if he could play like Landry every night but as a starter he would be pretty good. If you're interested in a big, hustle guy who could play SF or PF look no further than DeMarre Carroll, guy's a stud.