Jalen Williams doesn't pass the eye test

[Lo Wang]

Harden is realistically 3 tiers above JDubb. Not even close

This has to be the worst take.

He's young. He'll be fine. He is a net positive overall because of his elite D. Let's look at the whole picture.

If you think that's the worst take you got another thing coming bobby boy

Bobby boy?

I appreciate the cute nick.

[cupcakesnake]

Williams still passes the eye test for me, but under the pressure of the playoffs, it seems like his best role is a bit more complimentary in nature. In a similar way to guys like Shawn Marion as they dominated everyone statistically during the regular season but started to find more difficulty in playoff pressure. He's also still very young and could grow through this patch pretty quickly.

Is that Marion though?
Marion's story with the Suns was more that those teams had really short rotations (that usually got even shorter due to injury) and Marion was tasked with huge workloads. His only real ugly playoff series came again San Antonio in the Conference Finals, a series where he was asked to guard Tim Duncan and Tony Parker, while being their primary rebounder and transition guy. Marion had been playing over 40mpg. He'd just come off playing 45mpg of guarding Dirk Nowitzki (played him to a standstill offensively as well!), and before that he was guarding Pau Gasol. Then Joe Johnson gets hurt, shortening the Suns 7-man rotation to 6 and Marion just collapsed. I always felt he got a really unfair treatment by fans for that series, especially because it's his only really bad scoring series in his prime.

I think people are overreacting to J.Dub having a few awful scoring performances in a hyper-physical Nuggets series. He never stopped with the elite defense and playmaking, and he managed to bust out of the scoring slump in a couple of those games.

If he looked like a different player, I'd maybe be concerned, but this is mostly just him missing shots. He weirdly doesn't love open 3s, and in this offense (especially with how teams guard OKC in the playoffs), he has to take a lot of them. J.Dub has been up and down as a shooter so far in his career. He's had hyper efficient shooting stretches, but been bad enough at other times to make you wonder if the shooting is real. After a couple more playoff runs, I'd be surprised if this trend held up.

I think in a scoring obsessed media/fandom, we forget that Jalen isn't actually playing bad overall. Against the Nuggets, he had 42 assists to only 10 turnovers (an insane 4:1 assist:to ratio), 10 steals, and 6 blocks. Really strong playmaker who also managed to get to the line. He had 3 atrocious shooting games in that series, and the Thunder need more from their second option, but he absolutely wasn't bad in this series.

[ChumboChappati]

I would consider a trade for him. Maybe Scottie Barnes?

Jalen Williams > Scottie Barnes. If Raptors want him, they may have to give up Barnes + IQ or Barnes + FRPs

Thats an awful trade for OKC.. Scottie's offense is all rim attacks with extremely high usage

Thats why Raptors have to give up more than just Scottie. Scottie is still pretty good player. And I am hoping OKC will fix Scottie's game where needed, and use him correctly unlike Raptors. Plus you are getting IQ who could be the microwave scorer off the bench. I think this is a good deal for OKC.

[NyKnicks1714]

OP: Go see your ophthalmologist.

[PushDaRock]

How this dude became an All-star is beyond me. Leastern conference activity right here. End of an era.

Not bad for a Role Player tonight

[durden_tyler]

For Game 4, Jalen Williams passed the eye test and all other tests there is. Those crucial shots late were tough and special, i think he was the difference maker tonight (more than SGA).

[DrModesty]

3 strong games out of 4 so far this series, with the one bad game in the crazy blowout.

[TheGOATRises007]

Arguably been as good as ANT the entire series.

[ImmortalD24]

How this dude became an All-star is beyond me. Leastern conference activity right here. End of an era.

Not bad for a Role Player tonight

Not bad at all.

[Handlez]

He pass dat box score test.

[dakomish23]

15 playoff games so far. 9 of them he shot well in & OKC is 8-1 in those games (only loss was the OT loss to DEN). Not bad at all

[knicksfan974]

Incredibly important player for the Thunder. My thinking is you don't need to stop SGA, but if you can limit Williams, you are already in quite good position when playing the Thunder.

[Sixers in 4]

Their toughest test was Denver. Minnesota is a great team but Rudy offensively can't force OKC out of its smallball lineup

[cupcakesnake]

Their toughest test was Denver. Minnesota is a great team but Rudy offensively can't force OKC out of its smallball lineup

What small ball lineup? OKC plays with a 7-foot center on the floor at all times. The brief moment last night they went smaller was when Rudy was on the bench.

[ImmortalD24]

Going to have to prove it tonight.. this is it.

[fanofthegreats]

Guy is absolute trash. Doesn’t even have an nba players body

[Darren]

A physical defender with inconsistent offensive game. But let's be reminded that this is the same JWill who's completely shut down Kyrie last playoff. For a Max, absolutely not. But there're a lot of incompetent players like Austin Reaves looking for max or near max contract. Without JWill, the defense is not nearly the same. The defense is strong because OKC goes super big without a PG and there's super strong defender at each of the starting position.

[Chuck Everett]

A physical defender with inconsistent offensive game. But let's be reminded that this is the same JWill who's completely shut down Kyrie last playoff.

And now is guarding Siakam and Nesmith and completely being disruptive on that end (neither guy looks in rhythm when matched up against him). This site only cares about scoring for the most part.

[cupcakesnake]

A physical defender with inconsistent offensive game. But let's be reminded that this is the same JWill who's completely shut down Kyrie last playoff. For a Max, absolutely not. But there're a lot of incompetent players like Austin Reaves looking for max or near max contract. Without JWill, the defense is not nearly the same. The defense is strong because OKC goes super big without a PG and there's super strong defender at each of the starting position.

He is guaranteed to get the rookie max extension. That's very different from a max contract.
A wing defensive anchor is crazy rare. One that's also a strong secondary playmaker, and averages 20ppg is...well that's an All-NBA, all-defense level player and is clearly getting a max extension off their rookie contract. Crazy to say "absolutely not" when it's the only possibility.

[cupcakesnake]

Guy is absolute trash. Doesn’t even have an nba players body

I've seen you say this a few times now. Can you explain what you mean? A jacked 6'5" dude with a 7'2" wingspan doesn't have an nba players body?