Breaking down Eric Bledsoe's game by Play Type.

With Bledsoe joining the Bucks, I decided to look at how he played last season by the numbers and look at what type of role he played on the Suns to see how he might fit on the Bucks. I am just looking at the "Play Type" statistics tracked by Synergy that are publicly available on NBA.com. All numbers from last season, since the sample this season is too small to be very meaningful.

#Pick-And-Roll Play

Given that he is a PG, Eric Bledsoe's did much of his work out of the PnR. 45.6% of his possessions came as the PnR ball handler last year and his 10.0 possessions per game out of the PnR ranked 8th in the entire NBA and more than double that of the nearest Buck.

Out of the PnR, Bledsoe averaged 0.99 PPP, putting him in the 87.8th percentile of the league. To put that in perspective, Brogdon and Giannis both averaged 0.81 PPP on such plays last season and Delly averaged 0.73 PPP on such plays. Bledsoe is more efficient than any Buck primarily because he is less TO prone than the Bucks top three PnR options from last season, Brogdon, Delly, and Giannis.

Bledsoe clearly uses the PnR to score, as he scored on a higher percentage of his PnRs than any of the other top-50 highest volume PnR players in the NBA other than Demar DeRozan. His efficiency on PnR possessions was also higher than any of the other top-50 except for Harden, Lillard, IT, Lowry, Conley, and Hill.

NBA.com doesn't provide stats on his assist numbers out of the PnR, so I looked at the tracking data on his drives to see how often he passes when he gets in the lane. This isn't perfect, but I think it provides a good heuristic for his distributing tendencies.

Bledsoe was 9th in the league in drives per game last season, averaging 10.3 per game. On those drives, he passed 35.6% of the time, which is actually higher than six of the eight players with more drives than him. To put that number in perspective, Giannis passed on 30.7% of his drives last season, Jabari passed on 23.4% of his drives, and Brogdon passed on 44.1% of his drives.

Bledsoe averaged 1.0 assists per game on drives and 0.8 TOs per game on drives. As far as I can see, this is worse than most of the other top drives in the league, although it actually is a better ratio than Wall and DeRozan. Drive A/TO rate seems to not necessarily correlate with overall A/TO rate. Giannis's A/TO rate on drives was 0.8/0.8, Jabari's was 0.3/0.4, and Brogdon's was 0.9/0.3 (Which is really outstanding to be honest, Brogdon definitely stays in control if nothing else).

Recap: So Bledsoe is a very efficient, high volume PnR scorer. As a distributor out of the PnR, he seems to be fairly average or below. He should be easily the best PnR player on the Bucks, but isn't a guy that seems likely to unlock Giannis as a roll man or anything like that.

#Isolation

9.4% of Bledsoe's offense came from isolations. From what I can tell, this is a relatively low proportion for a starting PG, but his overall usage was high enough he still averaged more isolations per game than all but 36 players last season. He was 12th among starting PGs in isolations last season.

Bledsoe's extraordinary efficiency out of the PnR does not translate to extraordinary isolation play. Bledsoe only averaged 0.85 PPP out of isolations, good for the 54th percentile in the league.

Among the top 50 in isolations per game last season, Bledsoe was 42nd in eFG% at 39.6%. He is a very inefficient shooter on isos, likely stemming from his relatively low efficiency on pull-up jumpers (39.7% last season) It is a testament to his slashing ability he could be so efficient on the PnR with such a mediocre pull-up jumper. But Bledsoe makes up for his poor shooting in isos somewhat with his ability to draw fouls and protect the ball. Among the top-50 in isolation possessions, Bledsoe was the 16th best at drawing shooting fouls and had the 19th lowest TO rate.

So Bledsoe overall seems to be a lesser iso scorer than most top PGs. Nevertheless, he was a more efficient iso scorer last year than any Buck not named Michael Beasley and scored more points per game out of isos (1.7 per game) than any Buck not named Giannis (2.2 per game).

#Transition

Bledsoe is known for his transition ability and looking at the numbers, he did rank 9th in the NBA in transition possessions last season. Unfortunately, Bledsoe only averaged 0.96 PPP in transition, good for the 27.5th percentile of the entire league and 6th worst of the top 50 in transition scoring with more than one game played.

Bledsoe pushes the ball forward, but only had an eFG% of 54.0 in transition last season and turned the ball over on 19.6% of his transition possessions.

Transition plays typically are efficient - 0.96 PPP really isn't bad for other play types - but Bledsoe doesn't get the efficiency boost others get from them. I guess that is the cost for attacking as much as Bledsoe does - Westbrook, a similar style attacker, shoots even worse in transition than Bledsoe does and turns it over even more (making up for it with FTs), and Harden is ever less efficient due to a ghastly 29.6% TO rate in transition.

Bledsoe is not quite the transition threat Giannis is - Giannis averaged 1.28 PPP in transition last season at even higher volume than Bledsoe.

#Spot-ups

Bledsoe is not known as a spot-up shooter and the stats bear that out - spot-ups make up only 11.1% of his offense, with him averaging 2.4 spot-ups per game. He did shoot them pretty well, averaging 1.06 PPP on spot-ups, good for the 72.6th percentile in the league. We will see if this is enough to keep defenses honest and force them to close out on him.

#Overall

Bledsoe's strong suit is PnR play. He loves to push transition and attack via the drive after getting screens on the ball. He is adept at snaking the PnR and avoids TOs due to his conservative passing. His efficiency unremarkable other than on PnR plays, but on none of the four major play types that make up 85.9% of his offense - PnR ball handling, transition offense, isolations, and spot-ups - is his PPP lower than 0.85.

It will be interesting to see how he is integrated into the Bucks offense. The Bucks went all of last season without a single player that was a high volume PnR threat and they just added a top-10 PnR player in the game - how Giannis is used while Bledsoe is running PnR will be something to watch for. Will Giannis handling the ball set up the Bledsoe PnR? Will Bledsoe handle on the PnR off ball swings or will it mostly just happen early in the clock after he dribbles the ball up the floor? Where on the court will Bledsoe run most of his PnR? The Bucks need to find a way to get Bledsoe going in the PnR without freezing Giannis out of the offense or stopping ball movement.