It's trivial to grab the data as CSV from basketball-reference.com. I just chose where to add up the columns. March 1 seems to be the day he turned into a quality NBA rotation player, so... We wonder why Mirotic didn't get 48 minutes a game all along. Well, he didn't play well enough to warrant it. As he played better, he got the minutes. Even to the point of pushing Taj down in the rotation.
Beginning of season thru February 28: 11.6 fga, 5.2 fta, 15.2 pts, 9.0 reb, 2.3 ast, 1.1 stl, 1.2 blk (per 36 min) 0.45 fta/fga, .548 TS%, .482 eFG%, 14.2 Reb%, 19.6 usg% March 1 thru today: 17.3 fga, 8.5 fta, 24.3 pts, 8.9 reb, 1.9 ast, 0.9 stl, 1.4 blk (per 36 min) 0.49 fta/fga, .578 TS%, .498 eFG%, 13.3 Reb%, 30.1 usg% Plainly, clearly and obviously, the only thing Niko has done more of since March 1st is shoot the ball more. Plainly, clearly and obviously, this is the result of Rose and Butler not playing since March 1st, which obviously moved Niko up 2 spots in the offensive pecking order. With two of the Bulls' 3 leading scorers out injured, of course Niko got more shots (his usage rate jumped 50%). He's getting to the FT line at an almost identical rate, he is rebounding at an almost identical rate, and his assists, steals and blocks are also quite similar. His TS% has jumped by 3%, which even based on the quantity of shots he's gotten since March 1 (fga + fta*.44) means he's now scoring 24.2 per game instead of 23.0 points per game. I'm sure he's a little better in games 60-74 than he was in games 1-59, that's to be expected for a rookie. Again, the big difference is that he started getting more shots after March 1, when Butler and Rose were out injured. His effectiveness and efficiency are quite similar to what he had been doing the rest of the year.
Nikola Mirotic, meanwhile, just became the first rookie to lead the league in fourth-quarter points in any one month since Rodney Stuckey in April 2008. http://espn.go.com/nba/powerrankings
