New Orleans Pelicans: Zion Williamson should focus on lead handler skills

Zion Williamson already looked awfully dynamic in a small sample size, but his big dunks overshadowed his potential as a ballhandling presence for the New Orleans Pelicans.

Selected a little under a year ago with the first overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, Zion Williamson showed off a lot in 19 games with the New Orleans Pelicans this season, even though he spent the first three months of the regular season rehabbing a torn right meniscus.

Many were blown away by some of the on-ball dominance the rookie, as he muscled his way to the rim against bigger and more credentialled opponents, averaging 123.9 points per shot attempt per Cleaning The Glass.

However, close watching reveals that Williamson’s creativity goes far beyond scoring. Playing just 565 minutes this season, Williamson’s passing skills jumped off the page.

Coming into the NBA, it was already well known that Zion could create with the rock in his hands and wrestle a defense to the rim. What will make him special in the NBA is if he can become one of the elite passing bigs in the league.

His New Orleans Pelicans teammates have already seen some of his passing skills in flashes, especially those on the interior of their offense.

On display this season, we saw Zion Williamson show off his clever interior passing, identifying defenders leaving Brandon Ingram and Derrick Favors on his crash, thus allowing Zion to sneak a pass into the pocket of a receiver for an easy, open slam.

His pocket passing is outstanding, so even if he’s never an elite ballhandling threat, those touch passes show an outstanding display of court vision from a young player.

With the continued progression of ball movement and floor spacing in today’s NBA, Zion’s gaudy 25.9% usage rate won’t work in tandem with his meager 0.42 assists-to-usage ratio (data per Cleaning the Glass).

The New Orleans Pelicans are pairing Williamson with other floor spacers, but they’ll only be a better team if Zion joins that regime.

Not owning a pretty jump shot despite his four-straight three-pointers against the San Antonio Spurs in his breakout debut, the Pelicans are going to need Zion to become a key creator in their offense without having such a high usage rate and shot volume.

Granted, Zion Williamson has the blessing of playing with one of the league’s blooming offensive creators in Lonzo Ball.

While both struggled with ball security during the 2019-2020 season, both still have plenty of time left to develop in that department.

• Lonzo Ball handling stats, 2019-2020 season: 32 minutes per game, 21.1% usage rate, 7 assists, 3.1 turnovers, 29.3% assist rate, 1.38 assist-to-usage ratio
• Zion Williamson handling stats, 2019-2020 season: 29.4 minutes per game, 25.9% usage rate, 2.2 assists,  2.7 turnovers, 12.6% assist rate, 0.42 assist-to-usage ratio

Certainly, you’d expect to see Lonzo ahead of Zion terms of passing stats, but next season it will be critical for the rookie forward to see a boost in production.

The ballhandling role will become critical for Zion at some point, perhaps the aspect that will decide if he’s going to be an MVP-level player as opposed to an All-Star level player.

These are good problems to have for a 19-year-old player. Williamson has a lot more refinement to do before he becomes one of the NBA’s elite, but if he becomes a feared passer, he’s going to become one of the most feared players in recent memory.

Sure, the Zion comparisons we hear most often have the rookie drawing parallels to Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley, though both of those players were better in old-school styles of basketball that had more emphasis on the post-up play.

If the New Orleans Pelicans have visions of front running in the NBA, they should hope Williamson starts picking up some of the ball-sharing moves that make Nikola Jokic so unstoppable for the Denver Nuggets.

Many isolate the skillset of Zion Williamson as something similar to a standard big, despite the fact that he possesses elite speed and explosiveness at 6’6″ and 285 pounds.

As Zion is far from a cookie-cutter post player, the Pelicans have to keep finding ways to innovate around his skillset. Picking up more passing and handling skills this summer will only benefit the organization in their pursuit of playoff and title contention down the road.

The New Orleans Pelicans and Zion Williamson both have plenty of growing room, but any augmentation of the team’s offensive attack will only make them a more dangerous threat when it comes time for them to start making strong pushes towards the playoffs in future seasons.