Uberly athletic players are what make the NBA; after all, the two greatest players to play the game were freaks of nature. The NBA tries its best to find the next athletic player out of the draft; athleticism is one of, if not the most important, traits teams like to see. It shows dominance and, most of the time, helps the team from day one. One of the greatest examples of this is Zion Williamson. The 6'6 power forward out of Duke University was an athlete no one has seen since LeBron James. Many would’ve guessed he was a football player. Nevertheless, Zion got drafted 1st overall in the 2019 draft, and ever since then, he has not disappointed on the court.
Rim Pressure
Rim pressure is a trait essential to any team. Although spacing and shooting have been normalized ever since the Golden State Warriors lit up our screens in 2015, rim pressure remains essential to any team trying to stay afloat. With this in mind, every team would love a player who can finish at an elite level while getting offensive rebounds. Zion is exactly that; he has attempted 12.3 shots per game at the rim in his career at 66.69% efficiency. This number is absurd considering Shaq, in his prime, never got close to 12 shots at the rim. Zion came in and topped the league in his first season with 12.7 shots per game at the rim. These numbers are unheard of and show Zion’s dominance in the paint. Albeit, his dominance is not just scoring; Zion has averaged over 2 offensive rebounds per game in his career. Combining these numbers just shows that if Zion is in the paint, it is an easy bucket. His efficiency, frequency, and outright dominance show that he is one of the best players at the rim and will continue to be so throughout his career.
Shooting
Zion was never a shooter; in fact, 78.5% of his shots in his career came at the rim, by far the most of any power forward. Couple that with 17.1 FGA at the rim per 100 possessions, and you have a player fairly dependent on attacking the rim. This makes his jumper practically negligible; he barely attempts a three-pointer a game. Regardless, he was never going to be a shooter; his game isn’t that. He needs to benefit from his body and athleticism, so he attacks the rim far more frequently. Although all of this is true, we can’t ignore the fact that Zion still showed flashes of great shooting. He has had games where he consistently dropped 3s: 4 (100%) 3PM vs. SAS (11/22/2020), 2 (66.7%) 3PM vs. PHX (12/11/2022), and 2 (66.7%) 3PM vs. IND (11/7/2022). Next, Zion has hit 41.8% of his wide-open 3s this season while also attempting 0.6 per game. While Zion isn’t an elite shooter, we can see he isn’t a real liability and will still provide some shooting if it’s desperately needed.
Playmaking
Big men handling the ball off the inbound and creating plays have been a recurring theme in the NBA. One example is Giannis during the 2023 playoffs, although it wasn’t frequent. The main goal of having these big men as ball handlers is that they would attract enough defenders to eventually have a player open for a shot, and Zion has shown some capability in doing that. There is a lot of variety in plays such as these, such as inverted picks and rolls. The Pelicans ran some inverted pick-and-rolls earlier in the season with Zion as the primary ball handler, and it was mostly a success.
Injuries & Regression (maybe?)
We all know of Zion’s consistent struggles with injuries and how they stampede his development in a sense. It’s really unfortunate to see a player only being held back by his consistent injuries. We have all seen Zion play; granted, not for long, but he is a clear MVP candidate if healthy. We haven’t seen such dominance on court in a great while, and if he can stay healthy, who knows what he could achieve? On the other hand, we have also seen some of the injuries really regress his game; Zion used to catch 12.6% of the available offensive rebounds off 2-pointers; last season, that number dropped to 6%. However, this could be attributed to him taking care of his body and not going for many offensive rebounds, so it shouldn’t be a worry for now.
Stats via PBPStats.com and NBA.com
