Mike Muscala
By A.J. Iezzi
My New Year’s resolution for Mike Muscala is to find consistency.
Anyone with a casual understanding of basketball can realize the Sixers are a very top-heavy team. The nightly efforts of Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, J.J. Redick, and Jimmy Butler should be enough to compete against any opponent. The Sixers’ starters are among the best in basketball, but the bench is the opposite. Muscla is a key member of the Sixers second unit, who needs to start stringing together quality games in 2019.
Muscala’s role is simple. Stretch the floor and defend. He’s not a focal point of the offense, but his ability to hit threes takes tons of pressure off of the Sixers’ first unit. His defense is touch-and-go, but he’s often asked to defend on the perimeter, which isn’t easy when you’re 6-foot-11.
The stretch big man has scored in double figures 10 times this season. The Sixers record in those 10 games is 8-2. Take that for what you will, but its a testament to how vital bench production is for a team with Finals aspirations.
Muscala is not good enough of a defender or rebounder to justify playing time when he’s not scoring. In the Christmas Day game against the Boston Celtics, Muscala was 1-9 from the floor and minus-11. On the other hand we’ve seen Muscala register a double-double off the bench and provided much needed energy on multiple occasions.
If Mike Muscala can get his 3-point percentage to league average and find ways to consistently impact the game other than score, he’ll have a productive 2019. However, first he’ll need to find a balance between occasionally looking like Kevin Love-lite and past-his-prime Spencer Hawes.