Let’s be honest: First impressions are important, especially in basketball. The most heralded guys, whenever you learn about them, are usually the ones with crazy mixtapes, 40-inch verticals, or the ability to shoot from 30 feet.
Grant Williams doesn’t have any of these things. Your first impression of him, if you happened to see him play at Tennessee, was probably less than charitable. Barrel chested and floor bound, Williams’ frame screams defensive lineman more than it does NBA lottery pick. He can dunk (quite easily, in fact), but doing so in traffic doesn’t come as easily to him as it does Zion Williamson. He’s not a prolific shooter, he’s not skying for rebounds and blocks, and he’s not flying through the lane for a crazy layup.
What he can do, however, is be exceptionally good at basketball.
Williams, a back-to-back SEC Player of the Year Award winner, would have been the most overlooked great player this past college basketball season if Brandon Clarke didn’t exist. Then again, as a scorer and leader, he was probably a more dependable threat than Clarke to lead a team to victory, which he did 57 out of 72 times and 28 out of 36 times in SEC play over the past two season.
The scouting report on Williams is hard to contextualize, because there aren’t really many players like him. Undersized as a big man and oversized as a pure wing, he’s a post scoring, post passing, close contact player in an era that emphasizes movement on the perimeter over anything else. His raw numbers are good (18.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.5 blocks per game), but don’t leap off the screen the same way that, say, Ja Morant’s do.
He can still hold up in the NBA because he possesses three rare attributes that almost every good NBA player has: he’s smart (both in the traditional sense and in the basketball sense), he’s strong, and he’s got great touch. Those three things can make even a sub-NBA athlete into a star (see: Jokić, Nikola).
To properly understand Williams, a deep dive in both stats and tape is needed. Using a rough estimate for what a “dominant” college player would be (5+ OBPM, 5+ DBPM, 15+ AST% and 2+ STL%), I filtered the last ten seasons on basketball-reference and found this list of players with a minimum of 300 minutes played.
https://twitter.com/Cosmis/status/1132519275535769600
Williams is not only on this list, but if you filter again for players who hit at least 75 percent of their free throws, he’s there and hit the most free throws out of anyone. College free throw percentage has long been considered a significant marker for future NBA range, and Williams’ improvement from 66.7 percent as a freshman to 81.9 percent as a junior is marked. He lived at the foul line all year, using his combination of strength and balance to completely overwhelm players who tried to muscle him out of his spots.
This raw strength was backed up at the NBA Draft Combine, where he weighed in at just over 240 pounds with less than six percent body fat and completed a combine-high 20 reps on the bench press. The man is stout and powerful, and while his wingspan is mediocre (6’9.75), his ability to absorb contact into his upper body and power through contests makes it long enough to be effective.
While it’s true that Williams’ back to the basket game may not translate to the NBA, where such play types are being called with less and less frequency, other parts of his game are awfully exciting. Williams did not often get the chance to lead the break, but his surprising speed, deft passing touch, and quick decision making made him absolutely shine when the opportunity arose.
Take this play against Iowa in the NCAA Tournament, in which he gets down court much faster than the defense is expecting, avoids a charge, and finishes with exceptional touch in the paint for an and one. To be able to put the ball in this exact spot while running full speed in the middle of a game is a rare trait for any power forward.
When it comes to checking opponents on the other end of the floor, Williams’ strength, balance, and footwork make him an ideal isolation defender in the post, where pure reach is usually trumped by power.
Here he is in that same Iowa game completely stonewalling Tyler Cook, a 6’9, 250 pound pro prospect in his own right. It doesn’t matter how high you can jump if the guy you’re jumping into is built like a Buick and knows where you’re going before you do. During that same basketball-reference session, I decided to see how many recent college players even equaled the combination of free throws, steals, and assists Williams put up this season — I went with 200 made FT, 100 AST, and 40 STL — and found that the only non-guards to do it since 1994 were Williams, Marqus Blakely, and David West. Blakely was one of the true pre-Twitter statistical weirdos, and probably would’ve gotten a shot in the league today, while West was a multi-time All-Star and fellow weird genius like Williams.
(A quick aside: Williams is incredibly good at chess, has learned 10 instruments in his life, and enjoys Settlers of Catan. You know, just like the average draft prospect.)
This is not to say that Williams is a flawless defensive prospect. The two areas on his Synergy profile that rate out as “below average” were in the pick-and-roll and against cuts. That is to say, on the perimeter and directly at the rim. He’s not quite fast enough to corral guards is what I’m getting at, and he shouldn’t be used as a primary rim protector, despite his occasionally impressive blocks. He’s more of a paint protector, there to clog things up and restrict access to key areas than he is an explosive rim protector. He’s there to prevent mistakes from being made instead of erasing them.
Switching back to offense, what gives me confidence about Williams’ jump shot going forward isn’t just his free throw percentage, it’s his balance and high release point. Those are two crucial facets for any non-freak athlete who wants to shoot contested jumpers, and nobody in college basketball was better at getting his shot off over contests than Williams. Finally, as a passer, he rates as one of the best in this draft regardless of position, finishing with four assists per 40 minutes despite almost never initiating any offensive sets. Williams’ passes were all instinct plays, reacting to double teams and finding cutters outside the flow of the offense.
Here’s an example of both, one from that Iowa game and one a round later against Purdue.
https://streamable.com/iafsy
What makes both of these passes special is Williams’ touch. Both land exactly where they need to to beat tight defenses and create good looks for his teammates. In the end, I think that’s the utility Williams adds most to whichever team drafts him: he just makes things work better when he’s on the floor.
His whole career, Williams has been overlooked and under-appreciated, even by the sorts of people who do this stuff for a living. But he’s experienced, intelligent, extremely strong, and as ready as anyone in this draft not named Zion to contribute to winning basketball in 2019. I probably wouldn’t take him in the top-5, since the chances of him becoming a true star are pretty low — his absolute peak is something like a less bouncy Paul Millsap — but teams in the 7-15 range that need as many good decision makers as possible should be all over a player the caliber of Grant Williams.
