coldfish wrote:I'm certainly not one who believes that coaching and management is infallible. If we believe that they are always above reproach, there isn't much point in having a discussion board, right?
What I see on tape isn't particularly impressive. I'm a Bulls fan so I hope I am spectacularly wrong.
My assessment isn't much different than yours, but I will say this, and I've said it before, and maybe you've seen me say it before.
A normal draft, you have about 6 weeks tops to work out before private workouts, maybe even less. That assumes you find an agent immediately and get in the gym immediately and don't take any time off.
This year, you had about 7 months to do that under those same circumstances. Williams seems like a humble and hungry guy that likely went hard working on his skills for that amount of time. Working with an NBA grade pro-trainer for 6 months just on your game, fundamentals, whatever might literally be the longest stretch that any pro prospect has ever gotten to do this uninterrupted by basketball games. Even pros don't have this much time to ever do this.
Fundamentally what we saw in tape from a year ago may simply not remotely be where these guys are at now. In six months with a pro trainer, someone may have worked on improving his release speed, lateral quickness, handle, off the dribble shooting, whatever. I have no idea.
Now the odds of this are the same for any prospect, all of them had this time, and anyone confident in their next stop being in the NBA likely had these means. The lotto guys probably had the most opportunity though, because the agencies would make teh most money off them and want them to improve the most.
The guys whom have NBA athleticism / bodies and need fundamental skill development would also be the ones most likely to make big strides because that's exactly the type of thing you can do in this environment most successfully.
The guys whom were willing to put in the hard work, would be the ones most likely to make the biggest gains as well.
So while everyone had this opportunity, if you look at how this opportunity would benefit people, Williams checks all the boxes as the type of guy whom would improve the most in this scenario, and that could trivially explain why he skyrocketed up draft boards relative to the film that's available from Oct-Mar of last year.
Granted, athletic guys often impress in workouts and then sometimes people get wowed by that empty gym skill and take them (Kevin Knox being the most recent example in my head), but Williams showed a ton of intelligence in college, a willingness to not do too much, and a skill (defense) that he will be able to use immediately.
Williams wouldn't be my pick, but my pick is rooted on who all these players were by looking at highlights from Oct-Mar, the pick today and scouting by the various NBA teams also encompasses seeing everything they did during an 8 month blackout period that we just have no idea.
No maybe nothing really happened here, but there's a pretty good chance something did.
