Zion Williamson Throwback Scouting Report
Unquestionably unique, Zion's college film shows just how dominant he could be... and what areas he'd certainly have to work through to become an MVP-caliber player
As we’ve often said, analyzing talent at the top of the draft isn’t the hardest part of scouting players, it’s just the most consequential. We spend most of our time discussing these top picks due to those consequences, breaking down the smallest portions of their game as a result and often getting too deep into the weeds to be able to see straight.
Time apart from prospects can be great because you only remember the bigger trends, the overarching skill types, and the moments of film or small pieces that were over-scrutinized fade into the background. Looking back years later can be very revealing and make the right analysis appear more obvious — not just because we have the hindsight to tell us what was correct, but because we aren’t bogged down in the minutia and searching for every little detail.
Zion Williamson is a unique player to look at in this context. As a pro, Zion has faced health issues (which some predicted or at least feard due to his frame). He’s struggled immensely on the defensive end despite flashes of some athletic upside that could allow him to be effective. His athleticism has been as advertised and as dominant as we projected on the offensive end.
Williamson was lauded by us, at the time of our scouting, as the best prospect we’d ever scouted. There were plenty of areas to clean up, mainly his shooting and his use of the right hand, but the physical dominance and ability to move guys on the court regardless of those limitations are what put him in a different stratosphere.
Zion’s college film does provide some indications of what we’re seeing now and why calling him the premiere prospect of my scouting days was inaccurate. First off, the mechanical issues with the jump shot were so vast that it would be difficult for Zion to ever improve in that area. He barely jumped, shot the ball poorly from the line and the field, and lacked overall fluidity in his stroke. Shooting 33% for his NBA career, Zion has proven that the way he was played in college has continued: there’s enough touch to make a few, but teams still sag off and dare him to shoot.
That’s a shame because, even with a reputable shot that he trusts himself to take 3-4 times a night, Zion would become one of the most unguardable offensive forces around. The projection of his overall game being dominant in the NBA came with the hope that the jumper would come a bit more than it has. Looking back, it doesn’t feel like that belief was based on any evidence, just the idea that shooters can and often do get better. Zion’s mechanics were so far behind that such a projection was flawed.
There’s also the lack of a right hand. Again, most of his projection as our best prospect ever came from the idea that Zion would achieve the most rudimentary improvements in this area — and then look how good he’d be. But Zion hasn’t addressed the polish needed with his off-hand, even though he had an entire year out of game action to make those strides.
Just this week, Zion was playing against the Memphis Grizzlies and they shaded him to his right hand. The Grizzlies were staunch in their coverage: force Zion right and baseline, send help to trap the box, and dare him to make an acrobatic finish with his right.
He couldn’t convert there consistently enough:
When Zion can’t spin back to his left or get all the way to the rim for an easy look with his right, he’ll take mid-range pull-ups. That’s a shot Zion has struggled with back to his days in college. Though the form has gotten slightly better, he’s just 3-9 on dribble jumpers this year, and was 6-18 on in 2020-21.
Zion is still a wildly impactful NBA player and probably a top-20 guy in the league. We didn’t miss too much on our evaluation of where and what he’d do to be impactful. The defense has been, to be blunt, a major disappointment, and one that prevents him from being closer to the top ten of current NBA players.
Despite being accurate in our identifications of strengths and improvement areas, the consequence for being wrong on a prospect we lauded above all others can be massive. Zion still was the right call to go #1 in the 2019 draft; no revisionist history can change my mind that it was blatantly obvious back then. But Zion’s lack of polish added in those two main areas that were identifiable (right hand and shooting) just shows how important continued development is in getting pre-draft evaluations right. The player we saw in 2019 cannot be the same player we’d see three or four years later.
In Zion’s case, outside factors of health have clearly played some role in the stagnation of skill development. He’s still young enough to address these, too. Many veterans retool their jump shot, and several can tighten their handle through hard work. Our mistake was assuming Zion doing so was a matter of when, not if.