Philadelphia 76ers: Shake Milton needs to find his edge this offseason

This past postseason for the Philadelphia 76ers revealed several flaws regarding their roster construction. The biggest issue is the lack of scoring from the bench. While it’s true that the Sixers need to upgrade their bench overall, they may already have the solution to finding a sixth man who can score.

Prior to the arrival of head coach Doc Rivers, combo guard Shake Milton showed real flashes of becoming a scorer under former head coach Brett Brown. Now the Sixers need more from Milton moving forward.

The Philadelphia 76ers need Milton to be more aggressive next season.

To be fair to Milton, he dealt with injuries this season and missed 27 games, the most since he’s become a rotational player. That certainly will impact his ability to be aggressive as a scorer.

Still, there were far too many times he’d settled in becoming a spot-up shooter, mainly once James Harden was acquired. The good news is that he did well in this role as he converted 36.7 percent of his 3-pointers after the All-Star game and 53.3 percent of his deep shots during the playoffs.

However, this season he only averaged 8.2 points and in the postseason he averaged just 5.0 points per game. The thing is, Milton has big game abilities. In the regular season, he scored in double digits 21 times during the regular season and twice during the playoffs.

The Sixers need more of that. Milton needs to be more aggressive in attacking the basket and taking open shots. Some of that is on Rivers to allow him to be a second or third option when he’s on the court, but most of that is on Milton himself to have the attack mentality.

When he’s more aggressive, it opens up things for the team’s main scorers. What will make things even easier for him now versus previous seasons is that with Harden and Tyrese Maxey getting the opposing team’s best defenders, Milton will have an easier matchup most of the time.

If Milton can average around 13 points per game as he did in the 2020-21 season, then the Philadelphia 76ers will be in much better shape going into next season. That starts with him working on being more aggressive as a scorer this offseason.