Jerryd Bayless‘ career shooting numbers have seldom been consistent. Could that be an issue for the Philadelphia 76ers?
When the Philadelphia 76ers shelled out a three-year, $27 million contract to Jerryd Bayless last offseason, the hope was that he’d provide immediate help as the team’s lead guard and one of their better scorers. A nagging wrist injury clearly diminished that opportunity, and he now heads into his second year with the team as somebody who will be fighting for secondary minutes with T.J. McConnell.
Bayless’ intended role on the floor, however, hasn’t changed. He’s a secondary ball handler coming off of a career-high year shooting the ball during his last campaign with Milwaukee. With Ben Simmons (and now Markelle Fultz) joining him on the roster, he’s essentially supposed to operate as a sparkplug on the perimeter who can keep the floor spaced while taking some of the ball handling load off of the younger players’ shoulders.
Philadelphia 76ers
With that said, expecting Bayless to come back as the sharpshooting gunslinger he was in Milwaukee may be ill-advised. As Derek Bodner of The Athletic pointed out, his career shooting numbers have typically come in the form of peaks and valleys — rather than consistent production:
"For the elite shooters among role players — guys like Danny Green — the slumping seasons tend to be the exception. He’ll have a down year mixed in with five other good ones. Bayless, on the other hand, has been much more inconsistent throughout his career. Over the six year period before he signed with Philadelphia, Bayless shot 33.6 percent, 42.3 percent, 35.3 percent, 35.8 percent, 30.8 percent, and 43.7 percent from three. So he could either be great or below average next season, and history suggests it’s about a coin flip chance for each."
There are plenty of areas where Bayless’ inconsistency could affect his status moving forward.
If Bayless isn’t at least an above-average shooter, the reasons for playing him in extended minutes diminish quite a bit. He’s not the same distributor as McConnell, while using minutes on a score-first veteran who’s struggling to hit shots doesn’t make much sense given the Sixers’ long-term goals.
The team also has a lot more scoring to rely on this year than they did last year, when Bayless was given his contract. Markelle Fultz and J.J. Redick will single-handedly transform Philadelphia’s perimeter presence, while Dario Saric‘s shift to the second unit lessens the need for another volume scorer. Bayless has value as somebody who can step in and get buckets at all three levels, but his most inconsistent version wouldn’t give Brett Brown much incentive to place him on the court.
Bayless’ shooting is also why he was perceived as such an excellent fit entering last season. He was somebody who was supposed to stretch the floor and give Simmons an outlet on the perimeter, something Philadelphia now has plenty of. If Bayless is clanking over two-thirds of his shots from deep, he’s not doing Simmons as much good as another high I.Q. playmaker like McConnell could — even if T.J., who’s substantially younger, doesn’t shoot it well himself.
Another factor that’s going against Bayless is health. He spent virtually all of last season nursing an injury to his left wrist, which eventually required season-ending surgery. As somebody who had his wrist immobilized for an extended period of time, there’s reason to expect Bayless’ stroke to have some rust out of the gates.
All of this factors into some legitimate concerns for Bayless entering next season. He’s somebody who has innate value as a scorer off the bench, but inconsistent shooting could sour many of the benefits that come with having a player of his ilk in the rotation.
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If Bayless doesn’t get himself in gear early on, it’s not difficult to picture McConnell gradually phasing him out of the rotation alongside names like Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, Nik Stauskas and Furkan Korkmaz.