DuckIII wrote:As arguably the biggest Luol Deng fan on the board, and someone who believes in Williams, I’d like to briefly address some of this:
1. Williams has already showed not better, but drastically better, ball handling skills than peak Luol Deng. One of the amazing things about Luol is that he was able to have such an impressive career as a perimeter player despite having a virtually non-existent handle.
2. Similarly, Williams physical profile combination of size, strength, vert, second jump and speed is significantly superior to Deng’s. I wish they had done all the pre-draft measurables because my guess would be that Williams’ would be well ahead of Deng’s in 100% of the categories.
3. The thing, though, is that Deng’s extremely high intellect, court awareness and work ethic were all absolutely elite by NBA standards. If you did a deep dive video into Deng’s awareness and ability to read the game defensively and without the ball, and compared it to that of Williams, they would be nothing alike. Deng’s video would be a clinic, Williams would be, um, an instructional video in what not to do.
In many ways, so far anyway, Deng and Williams are pretty much complete opposites of one another. It is a bizarre comp.
I believe #3 is underrated by most posters. It is much easier to see physical attributes and skills, but drive to improve and work ethic are invisibly the most important determinant to NBA success. Deng was the not just great at it, but he also directly impacted Jimmy's and Taj's development by serving as a mentor and role model. I see Zach trying to do that for White and Williams, and will be optimistic to see similar results.
I'm not too excited about Pat so far, but 2 things to add.
1) Pat's vision and passing look to me like his most impressive skill. The ball is in and out of his hands amazingly fast and he spots open guys and delivers the ball almost as good as Thad, who is elite.
2) While his man defense was not great, I was impressed with his help defense. I think it also stems from his vision.
