Patrick Lee Williams Comps?

[MGB8]

As folks above mentioned, beyond Marvin Williams and Harrison Barnes, OG and Otto Porter are also good comps in terms of non-aggression upon coming into the league.

OG looks like he evolved, Porter never really did, then got hurt a lot, then stopped caring.

A different positional comparison, but same issue of coming in too passive (but evolving) may be Pascal Siakam.

[Ice Man]

The Tony Snell comparison works.

1) Unusually quiet, non-demonstrative
2) Unimpressive college stats
3) Good-looking jump shot
4) Regarded as high-ceiling athlete

On item #4, Tony Snell certainly was. He had a 6' 11" wingspan and his lane agility time was the 2nd best at the draft combine. Faster than MCW, Dipo, Otto Porter, and Dennis Schroeder.

I mean, it's a sample size of one, and certainly does not mean that PWill's career will resemble Tony Snell's. But they have an outwardly similar draft profile. And yep, I looked it up, the early comparison for Tony Snell by the scouts was ... Kawhi Leonard.

[dougthonus]

I think OG is the guy Pwill comps to at the moment.

I think OG is good too, but haven't watched enough of him to be sure about some of the finer points.

[RoseTheFuture22]

Marvin Williams is kind of an interesting comp, there are a lot of similarities. He didn't live up to the #2 pick but he had kind of an underrated career and I kind of think if you put him in the NBA today he has more success because he is able to play more of the 4.

Jeff Green is another possible name I haven't seen come up in here yet. Another guy kind of caught in between who was fed a lot of minutes early in his career but struggled defensively despite the tools and always kind of left you wanting more offensively with their potential skillset. Still a solid overall career but again didn't quite meet expectations.

[Michael Jackson]

Kwame Brown good skill set that everyone could see but way overwhelmed coming into the league

[sco]

I’m struggling to think of young players, regardless of how they turned out in the end, who were very talented and diversely skilled and were extremely hard workers, but were just crazy passive once they hit the floor.
...
Mentally? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it from someone with this much ability. Even from a rookie. Plenty of time yet to fire the engines, but damn.

Before we get to examples, I think we have to establish the reason for the passivity. Your post implies it's due to his "Nature" but I think the evidence clearly points to "Nurture".

Here's what's happened.
1. He started off the season fine (Usage rate 17.6 in December. Month by month, it's fallen every month: 16.3, 15.4, 14.8, 12.5).
2. His coach has made repeated comments about how he appreciates Pat "playing within himself" and has harped on him for taking too many mid range shots.

2 is especially problematic because this was the strongest single part of Pat's game at the beginning of the season.

It's very easy to connect the dots between 2 and 1. He started off being active and doing what he does best. He's been coached to no longer do what he does best, and the direct result is that he's been increasingly passive.

So the answer is that he's passive because he's a very coachable player who's being badly coached.

So, this could go one of two ways. I think the Luol Deng example is good. They're somewhat similar as players, but here lets just focus on coaching. Skiles looked a Lu and basically said, hey man, stop with the 3 pointers, you suck at it. So he did. But, Skiles was really good at working the offense to make use the the things Lu was really good at. He'd cut, come off screens, post up, you name it. Early Lu was a guy who needed the offense working for him, but the results were pretty good.

Then you had Vinny Del Negro come in, and he had a much more lassez-faire approach to offense. He really valued guys who could and would create for themselves. So you got a lot of early Derrick Rose and, Ben Gordon, and John Salmons doing a lot of individual creating and Lu, who never really had the handle and first step for this, was routinely seen to be "underachieving" based vs. the higher usage trajectory he was on with Skiles.

Then, you had Thibs, who was the only one of these three guys to both implement some things to play to Lu's strengths (Skiles did, Vinny didn't) and to really encourage some growth (I don't think Vinny really did much here, but he at least gave Lu a green light to shoot, vs. Skiles who actively took that away).

Donovan is basically doing the worst of both. He's stopped Pat from doing something he does well, and has implemented an offense that's designed to give a lot of freedom for really smart and experienced (high bball IQ) players with a lot of creation abilities.

-----------

Adding to the examples, I see basically two ways this could go.

Deng is an example of the first way. He'll change his game to fit what the coach wanted. A couple further examples, related to Billy Donovan would be Victor Oladipo and Domas Sabonis. BD wanted both of them playing ancillary and very narrowly defined roles. Domas was a guy he wanted rebounding and shooting 3s and nothing else. Oladipo got a little more usage, but still a huge decline from his prior and he was expected to be much more of a spot up guy than he ever should have been.

But basically, all of those guys were more "passive" but immediately lost their passivity when a coach came along who decided to play to their strengths instead of treating them like a spare part.

The second way it could go is that Pat learns the wrong lessons and gets forever gun-shy. I don't think this happens, but you could point to guys like Andre Roberson or Terrance Ferguson as worst case scenarios.

I agree regarding #2. It probably accounts for his shot reduction as it often resulted from Pat faking the 3, driving, and getting stopped. Now he passes more on those - which is probably the right play, but it annoys us as it reduces his shot volume. I think Billy was hoping Pat would either take more of those 3's or be more aggressive going to the hoop. The latter has been a weakness. Pat needs to work on drawing contact on his drives and getting to the line more.

[SalmonsSuperfan]

i don't think we can call patrick williams a good shooter (yet or maybe ever). he shoots a fine percentage, but he only shoots when he's wide open. when he gets swung the ball at the three point line as the open man, i assume he's going to miss it or pass it once more to someone less open.

hard to say what a good comp is, but i feel like 'harrison barnes' and 'marvin williams' are quite optimistic, let alone kawhi or jimmy. i don't think he's nearly as talented as some would claim. at this point, i'm wondering if he'll even get a second contract. i think he's passive just because he's not very good and has to start against season pros every night. maybe that's good for development but I kind of don't think so.

[GoBlue72391]

i don't think we can call patrick williams a good shooter (yet or maybe ever). he shoots a fine percentage, but he only shoots when he's wide open. when he gets swung the ball at the three point line as the open man, i assume he's going to miss it or pass it once more to someone less open.

hard to say what a good comp is, but i feel like 'harrison barnes' and 'marvin williams' are quite optimistic, let alone kawhi or jimmy. i don't think he's nearly as talented as some would claim. at this point, i'm wondering if he'll even get a second contract. i think he's passive just because he's not very good and has to start against season pros every night. maybe that's good for development but I kind of don't think so.

Unless he significantly speeds up his release, PWill will always be a low volume 3 point shooter because he'll only be able to get his shot off when wide open.

[dougthonus]

I don't agree with anything in your post about his physical talent or skills, to such a significant degree I think you are completely and utterly wrong about all of it.

Out of curiosity, what skill / physical talents do you think he has that are off the charts?

Do you seem him as an elite athlete up there with the very best in the league?

Do you see his court vision, ball handling, or shooting at that level?

I mean he certainly could develop any of those things over time, just like any other player, but none of those skills stand out to me relative to his age / experience, and his athleticism is good, but doesn't strike me at the LeBron or even LaVine level of clearly better than everyone around him.

I've read numerous reports about Williams going back illustrating that he's a gym rat and basketball junkie, much like Zach, with another similarity between the two being that there families are hoops families. So just assume, whether you agree or not, that he's a hard working basketball-immersed type of guy. Unlike say Eddy Curry who I mentioned in my opening.

And just FYI, I don't dispute this at all, just these types of reports exist around most players coming out of college, and I think they are true for most players too. You, in general, aren't likely to become one of the top 19 year olds in the nation without putting in this type of work, though there are definitely some exceptions, and how you put in the work certainly matters too.

I tend not to think of this area as a standout thing until I see it play out over time for a player.

[2weekswithpay]

To be clear, what I’m ultimately looking for are examples of highly talented hard working players who were incredibly passive early in their careers. It would be interesting to see how many guys like that there have even been, and among them how their careers panned out.

Reminds me of Andrew Wiggins although the perception towards Wiggins as being passive may be distorted a bit because of his expectations.

Watch on YouTube

[MrSparkle]

I think we all agree that this is not the rookie season we wanted him to have. But it also wasn't the type of performance to write him off. Short of immediate impact superstar ala Rose, I'm actually okay with not having another inflated rookie season ala Lauri. Hope he has a chippy summer of training- please go to LA and hang out with Lebron and Kawhi.

[MikeDC]

I agree regarding #2. It probably accounts for his shot reduction as it often resulted from Pat faking the 3, driving, and getting stopped. Now he passes more on those - which is probably the right play, but it annoys us as it reduces his shot volume. I think Billy was hoping Pat would either take more of those 3's or be more aggressive going to the hoop. The latter has been a weakness. Pat needs to work on drawing contact on his drives and getting to the line more.

Yeah. I'm pretty concerned that they don't really understand what sort of player he is.

This also gets to the idea of Pat's athleticism. He's a good athlete, but it's not realistic to have him get to the hoop from the 3. I don't care how much space he's' getting, his handle and his overall speed and hops don't allow for that.

Which is fine, that's true of most guys. And a lot of guys compensate for it by being really good from the mid-range. They specialize in stopping and shooting even when covered, or... gasp... starting a play from somewhere inside the 3 point line (ideally coming off a screen) so they're close enough to get to the hoop.

In a way, this is a whole lot like the story of Lauri here. Lauri's a better 3 point shooter, but you put him that far out and he just doesn't have the speed to go by many guys. If you really discourage the mid-range game, you're going to pretty drastically limit how you use him.

Pat's substantially more athletic than Lauri, and he seems to have a much better mid-range feel (Lauri's been pretty bad at it even when he was allowed to do it).

But really, it's the same old story of superficial understanding of statistics. The "smart people" hate mid-range shots now, so they discourage guys who should be encouraged to shoot from mid-range like Pat. Even if a guy is a mediocre to bad mid-range shooter like Lauri, he should still have the green light to shoot from there when it makes sense. Because that reduces the predictability of the offense. Otherwise, you have guys passively standing around and passing out of shots they might out to take.

[nomorezorro]

it kind of sucks that we gave ourself a strong incentive to make the playoffs, because it would be really nice to call williams's number a lot more often and see if the traits that people like duck see in him are real or if we're just too hyped on flashes. if you didn't care about losing games you could let him iso a few times a game, put him in pnr as a ballhandler and screener, etc. right now he's basically a rorschach test because there's a limited amount of information to base your assessment on.

in addition to the passivity question, it might be interesting to consider prospects whose "upside case" was similar to williams. for me, the reason why i'm optimistic about his future is that even though he hasn't flashed an elite skill, for basically every aspect of his game, i think "there's no reason he can't be good at that." shooting, strength, defense, a little cutting, dashes of off-the-dribble creation for himself and other — there's footage to buy into even in a statistically unremarkable season.

now obviously, the counter to all that is that without an elite skill he's unlikely to be a star; jack of all trades master of none and all that. but my instinct is that having a solid all-around foundation at his age means he's more likely to eventually develop an elite skill — or maybe more accurately, a package of very good skills that makes him a very effective player. i remember when boston fans were hyping up jaylen brown his first few years, my thought was basically "i don't see it, at all." didn't impress me when i saw him play. not an efficient scorer, not a consistently good shooter, not a remarkably good defender. i wasn't sure what, exactly, he was bringing to the table, and i thought he was just a guy getting hyped up because of the team he played for. now he's scoring 25 ppg on very good efficiency.

of course, the reason i think of jaylen brown first is because he's the one guy who i thought "he's not that good" and then he turned out to be good. there were probably a lot more people who didn't pan out who aren't coming to mind because they don't play into the narrative i want to be true. in the end, i kind of tend toward thinking "most players aren't remarkably good, and outside of the generational prospects, it's real hard to predict which ones hit and why." player development is weird these days. who knows what's gonna happen

[RoseTheFuture22]

To be clear, what I’m ultimately looking for are examples of highly talented hard working players who were incredibly passive early in their careers. It would be interesting to see how many guys like that there have even been, and among them how their careers panned out.

Batum started 76 games his rookie year and only averaged 5 points. It took him until his age 22 season to really find a role on offense. Gordon Hayward and Paul George fit the bill as successful guys who were mostly passive for the first 2 years.

[nomorezorro]

it's crazy that jimmy butler literally always measured out well by ws/48. i remember him being another guy who i was like "...really?" when people were treating him like a prospect worth caring about, but even in his incredibly limited rookie season and his not-worth-an-extension third season, he's turning out comfortably above-average numbers.

[Bandit King]

Lebron said Kwali Leanord I say he's high!!

[fleet]

The Tony Snell comparison works.

1) Unusually quiet, non-demonstrative
2) Unimpressive college stats
3) Good-looking jump shot
4) Regarded as high-ceiling athlete

On item #4, Tony Snell certainly was. He had a 6' 11" wingspan and his lane agility time was the 2nd best at the draft combine. Faster than MCW, Dipo, Otto Porter, and Dennis Schroeder.

I mean, it's a sample size of one, and certainly does not mean that PWill's career will resemble Tony Snell's. But they have an outwardly similar draft profile. And yep, I looked it up, the early comparison for Tony Snell by the scouts was ... Kawhi Leonard.

I can see that on the passivity scale, but I wasn’t one of those that saw a high level of raw talent and ability in Snell. E-Rob I thought more highly of in terms of that, and E-Rob always left me waiting for him to engage it here. I guess In Charlotte he was on a better trajectory.

[2018C3]

Right now, he reminds me of a young James Posey.

I do think he could be much more than Posey, but it's all going to depend on his mentality.

I kind of like this comparison, if we were to judge what he is today. His game does look sort of what I remember from Posey. I think the difference is Patrick entered the league much younger. I'm going to give him a break and hope he gets better. I think he will, its got to be hard for a 19 year old kid who was never the man to come into this league.

I understand his tentative behaviors. I still have hope with proper coaching, he could grow out of the passiveness he often displays and learn to be more assertive. Its what I hope for, but understand its not a given this will happen. I give it about a 50/50 shot he will develop a more aggressive attitude with age.

It would take a really special kid to come into this league at 19, and be assertive. By the time he is 21 I think he will be both stronger, and more confident in his abilities.

[FecesOfDeath]

Boris Diaw. The most talented player who doesn't know it yet.

[HINrichPolice]

I think Patrick Williams epitomizes the "good soldier" stereotype.

He feels like he has a role, and just tries to play within it while avoiding mistakes.

I think this summer, he gains confidence in his ball handling, shot creation, and the game slows down for him next year.

The root problem is that he just doesn't want to make mistakes, and I think that's a root problem that is very fixable with experience.

I'm not sure what other player has this trait quite to the extent that he has it.