The case for Patrick Williams; or, how to rebuild while rebuilding
For some prospects, The Strickland is going to take a closer look at why they should be under serious consideration by the Knicks. Some of these pieces will be written by guest analysts who have shown a knack for unique perspectives on the draft. Today’s piece on Patrick Williams (and rebuilding) comes from purveyor of all things scout, draft, and development PD Web, an indispensable Twitter follow and Pod Strickland guest alumnus. If you want to see more of his work and support it, check his Patreon and throw him some ducats.
For the basics on Pat Williams, check out our short profile here.
I have some really good news: the Knicks have a very bright and interesting roster, centered around modern pieces and a vision to build a playoff team out of the young pieces that are on the current roster.
More good news: the hiring of assistant coaches Kenny Payne and Johnnie Bryant, along with Dice Yoshimoto, Andy Greer, and Mike Woodson are a great infrastructure for — and here is the bad news — a rebuilding team.
There may be a part of you that says, “It’s been a rebuilding team for years, the Knicks stink, of course they are rebuilding.” Readers, pay attention to this: I’m afraid, Knicks fans, that this is year 0 of a rebuild, and that for the ledger of this long-suffering team to be wiped clean, that previous crappiness must be forgiven and discarded, as it is irrelevant to the path forward. And the path forward, to be clear, is being a development-focused franchise that loses a lot of games next season while playing all the young guys.
[Editor’s note: Strickland Contributor Jonathan Macri recently made the argument that NYK can make good picks and signings and will still end up losing a lot of games — for the better, as PD says]
Had the lottery gone a different way, had the Knicks gotten a top three pick… this strategy, this longer view, would not have entered the discourse. There isn’t a larger plan needed to “play the top pick,” and to be real, most rookies are bad and none of the top three picks in 2020 make a team an instant playoff contender. It’s not always a good plan, but there just isn’t a lot of optionality at the top of the draft.
No, the Knicks are in a much more fun situation — they pick in the plateau area, picks 4-16 of an entirely development- and deployment-based draft. The Knicks are now led by a front office with a new lease on patience, granted multi-year vision of evaluating scarcity and employing a coaching staff with a sterling track record of developing players.
For all the historical hand-wringing about free agents, the allure of New York has a lot more purchase on the imaginations of established stars with the backing of a deep rotation of younger players on rookie scale contracts and an organization with a track record of plan-having.
And then there are the future picks. (That Clippers pick is a fake first now that hell has frozen over and LAC is GOOD, so we will ignore it.)
That’s four first rounders in the next two years, and four picks in what is looking to be the best draft since 2009. If there was a time to be selectively bad, to play the youths, to really parcel out playmaking reps and have players explore the studio space, there’s no better time than the 2020-21 season.
Before we move on, let’s take a look at the wing rotations and broad archetypes of the final eight from this year’s playoffs.
Rockets: James Harden (initiator and shooting), Robert Covington (3-and-D), PJ Tucker (corner shooting and wing D), Danuel House (3-and-D)
Lakers: LeBron (LeBron), Danny Green (3-and-D), Kyle Kuzma (scoring 4), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (3-and-D), Markieff Morris (vibes)
Celtics: Jaylen Brown (slasher and D), Jayson Tatum (jumbo initiator), Marcus Smart (creation and D), Romeo Langford (D)
Raptors: OG Anunoby (4 slashing and D), Pascal Siakam (initiator and D)
Clippers: Kawhi (big wing), PG (wing plus shooting), Patrick Beverley (3-and-D), JaMychal Green (D) Marcus Morris (vibes)
Nuggets: Michael Porter Jr. (scoring 4), Gary harris (3-and-D), Jerami Grant (slashing 4), Torrey Craig (energy)
Bucks: Giannis (jumbo initiator), Khris Middleton (wing), Wesley Matthews (3-and-D), Marvin Williams (shooting 4), Donte DiVincenzo (3-and-D)
Heat: Jimmy Butler (wing initiator), Jae Crowder (3-and-D), Andre Iguodala (defensive 4), Tyler Herro (3-point shooter), Derrick Jones Jr. (slashing 4)
Basically every team has a bunch of different wings that can be deployed in a wide variety of circumstances, can be upsized or downsized, and can pack on playmaking or shooting without losing out on rebounds and defensive tenacity. Doing this exercise with the bad teams does not look the same.
This brings us to the 2020 draft, and a young 6-foot-7 big wing from Florida State: Patrick Williams.
PatWill is the type of player that defines the modern NBA: one capable of defining schemes.
Thibs may stick to ICE coverages on defense, with on-ball strength and scheme discipline being most important. Pat can do all that. If Thibs employs drop coverage? Still a great fit. If Pat can move better as he approaches his 19th and 20th years, real switching is on the table. Make the playoffs and need a guy to put on an island vs. Kawhi? Pat is the archetype that would be capable of holding up physically.
Having Pat Williams is having a big wing who can connect interior and exterior coverages while taking as little off the table offensively as possible, with scalable creation (more on that later) being an exponent of value, just for shits and giggles. On top of that, Pat isn’t just young, but one of the youngest players in draft. Being young also means that 6-foot-7 could now be a lie — teenagers grow.
The implication of FSU’s “everyone eats” mentality rings throughout Pat’s numbers, starting with the 22.5 mpg. On per-36 averages, Williams had: 14.8 points, 6.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.6 steals, 1.7 blocks with 46/32/84 shooting splits. As for the shot, there are robotic elements in Williams’ jumper, but I’ve thought he was a much better shooter than the numbers suggest, as only 1.7 threes per game and 2.6 free throws per game makes for unstable numbers. Taking Pat’s high school and EYBL numbers and adding in the college numbers gives us: 75% on 367 free throw attempts, and 42% (!) on 236 3-point attempts.
Now if Williams were just a 3-and-D prospect leading with athleticism-driven stocks (2.5 STL%, 5.6 BLK%), that would be an interesting prospect. But Williams is a developing playmaker with a unique pick-and-roll feel. While Pat is a tools-y high-feel defender with shooting and creation indicators (the aforementioned high school 3P%, the FT%, the midrange pull-up touch), he is also pretty far away. Pat can rebound and contribute stocks and shooting immediately, but the connecting skills of the theory of his upside are going to lag behind; for example, there needs to be a re-sculpting of his body (too bulky, too quad-heavy) to slide with NBA guards and just generally move better. Similarly, the shooting versatility and the off-the-dribble creation will take time. Time the Knicks have. And taking Pat, like Dennis Reynolds says, is all about the implications.
You see, the 2021 draft has:
Most of these guys would be top five (or higher) in 2020
From essential draft Twitter follow @cosmis:
Cade Cunningham: One of the five best prospects of the last 20 years
Jalen Johnson: An extremely good 6-foot-8 passer
Jaden Springer: An awesome power guard who may be 6-foot-6 or more now
Jonathan Kuminga, BJ Boston: 6-foot-7 or more huge upside wings with shooting
Jalen Green, Keon Johnson: Scorers with mutant athleticism
And this list doesn’t include Ziaire Williams, a 6-foot-8 shooting wing, who is, in my opinion, a top-five prospect in 2021.
That would, without any free agent additions, give the Knicks a 2021 core of:
Frank: 3-and-D wing plus POA defense
RJ: slashing wing plus D plus playmaking
TBD 2021 pick: wing creator
PatWill: big wing plus D plus shooting?
and MitchRob.
As well as the 2020 27th pick (prolly a guard) and 2021 Mavs pick (BPA wing).
Depending on player development, this is a playoff stable of wing players with corresponding skills not unlike what we saw in our earlier list of playoff teams, especially in the historically weaker Eastern Conference. This alignment also presents a good opportunity to talk about a team building philosophy I talked about a little bit in my longer PatWill breakdown, but would like to expound on because it really could unlock the developments of RJ & Frank.
“Component skills - Skills that exist in a relative vacuum. Putting a good dribbler on the floor doesn’t facilitate the expression of others’ dribbling. Post moves, on-ball defense, shot blocking, etc. There are connections within these skills, but they aren’t reflexive onto the same skill for others.
Compound skills - Create a ripple effect on the same skill, the clearest cases being scheme defense, passing, shooting. The more shooting gravity that is put on the floor, the better chance a player gets a better shot, better percentage, regardless of shooter. And the expression of these skills is rising tide that lifts all boats; a bad passer has an easier time passing on a team with multiple good passers, as the defense is always in rotation.”
Getting as many good wing defenders as possible, especially scheme plus defenders, is going to be essential to getting winning value from Ntilikina’s specific elite “component” skill: point of attack defense. A solid connected defense that minimizes penetration from the wings and forces creators to break down the defense is going to give Frank as much time terrorizing creators as possible. A great POA defender is useless when a team can just swing the ball once and get a good shot because the rotations are garbage. Add to Frank a brolic help defender like Barrett: a generally smart team defender whose physicality is best suited to assignments on off-ball secondary wings. Then, the addition of defensive pieces like PatWill and say, Cade or Jalen Johnson, would give the Knicks three positionally-advantageous defenders (who are generally good rebounders) with different styles, bodies and strengths — with Mitch behind it all to clean up penetration. That is the circumstances to create willing value out of rare plus defensive archetypes like Frank and Mitch. And isn’t that the rebuilding playbook? Find rare intersections of skills and build around them with a plan.
On offense, Pat Will allows for four- or even five-out spacing. Pat is not shy about shooting open threes, and the extra space and rotations opened by proper spacing will be exploitable by the off-ball slashing of RJ and others. I have never been a full believer in the idea that RJ is an on-ball primary: not without a huge step up in handle, shooting or short space creativity. Those are all developmental skills (and Johnnie Bryant is going to have the time to craft RJ into something more) but having proper spacing reduces the steepness of that growth curve’s difficulty, as RJ can run second side action vs. a tilted defense more effectively. If RJ develops into a primary, it’s found buried treasure, but placing him into already advantageous situations allows for growth with less frustrations. The spacing also allows Ntilikina to operate with less ball handling responsibility and more motion. No more 1-4 flat, and 4/1 double hand-offs can’t just be undered with Pat as the trigger man. Motion and space are the great equalizer, especially as Frank and RJ may yet bloom under a new regime of shooting coaches.
These are the calculations of a developmental franchise, trying to get as many solid bets that make sense together as reinforcing pieces. Players who are the mold of what a maximized lineup would look like, so that prospects can develop under ideal conditions and not stall out another’s development with poor spacing, overlapping skill sets, or duplicated roles.
NBA media has conditioned the public to look two, three, four, five, six years into the future for the next free agency situation, to the next Dwightmare, but it is somehow considered unwise to look even a single year ahead when making draft decisions. NBA teams are aware of players on much larger horizons than a single year away, so why not consider all the data points that a team would have? Let’s take a larger view, we don’t want to turn into the Orlando Magic or the Knicks of old. Take one more year of losing, but make it losing fun, losing competitive, losing with potential; one year of trying to figure out how these pieces line up and then slow play the 2021 group into the playoff core.
What, you got a better plan?
