New Orleans Pelicans: Breaking down Zion Williamson’s defense

New Orleans Pelicans: Zion Williamson must improve on defense

Isolations

Williamson’s biggest area of improvement this year will be defending isolations and generally any situation where the opponent has enough time to face him up and build a head of steam.

There’s no debating that Williamson is a once-in-a-lifetime type of athlete—at least vertically. He can move south-to-north either as a vertical spacer by playing above the rim, offensive rebounding or going coast-to-coast; however, his functional lateral athleticism was cause for concern last season.

Any situation where Williamson has to defend one-on-one that isn’t a post-up has the possibility to be a disaster for the New Orleans Pelicans.

Per NBA.com, he was in the 22nd percentile defending isolations. At this point, Williamson is not a realistically switchable defender, but his isolation problems don’t just come on switches. The results are far from encouraging even when he’s guarding players he should ostensibly be able to check.

Here, the Memphis Grizzlies run a simple hand-off from Ja Morant to Solomon Hill (by no means a top-tier athlete). Hill takes Williamson out of the play after one dribble and leaves the former Duke star chasing a block that simply doesn’t exist after Hill’s first dribble.

A similar scenario plays out with Williamson defending Brook Lopez when, again, he’s out of the play after one dribble. One could argue that Wesley Matthews’ screen complicates Williamson’s chances which, sure, but this is the NBA. Williamson sees the screen coming, it’s not like Lopez explodes to the basket, and the Pelicans’ no. 1 makes no second effort to get back into the play.

In an even simpler play, Jerami Grant gets the ball near the top of the key. At this point, Williamson is one-on-one but is completely unable to keep up with Grant. By the time Grant gets to the rim, Williamson is one or two steps behind and, as before, attempting a non-existent rejection.

As I touched on earlier, Williamson’s forays into defending smaller players tend to be just as bad, if not worse.

In layman’s terms, Williamson struggles to stay between his man and the basket. Whenever he tries to turn his body to do so (usually but not always when his man tries to change direction), he usually opens up far too much and gives his matchup ample room to do what they want. This problem is amplified when he’s on someone quicker and more agile than him.

The good news is that Williamson’s athleticism gives him certain leeway to make mistakes. He can use his forceful leap and hulking strength to produce jaw-loosening blocks, but only on occasion. The margin to do that significantly diminishes from college to the NBA where Williamson is facing the best of the best every night.