New Orleans Pelicans: Breaking down Zion Williamson’s defense
New Orleans Pelicans: Zion Williamson’s defense needs to improve
Post-ups
Williamson was largely only nominally a 4 or a 5 on offense as a rookie, but on the other end of the floor, he has to guard 4s or 5s due to his frame and current mobility issues.
Williamson fared better defending post-ups than isolations (0.90 points per possession compared to 1.10 points), but there is still room for improvement. Opponents scored on him 45 percent of the time in the post, albeit on a small sample size of 24 possessions.
The main problem Williamson runs into defending post-ups is that he is just too short at 6-foot-6. At the end of the day, he can only do so much about that. It’s relatively easy to shoot over Williamson, even when he puts up a solid challenge—but he does not always do that.
Williamson has a habit of letting his man establish position in the post. When that happens, the only thing he can do is hope that 6-foot-8 Thaddeus Young, 6-foot-10 Ante Zizic or 7-foot Brook Lopez miss.
Williamson will always give up size, but he can make his man work a lot harder to get where he wants to be. He does just that to Anthony Davis in this clip, pushing Davis away from the paint and coercing him into a contested fadeaway jumper.
It’s possible that no matter how hard Williamson works, he will never be a stingy post defender. Draymond Green (44 percent) and PJ Tucker (46 percent), two players with comparable body types to Williamson’s and reportedly longer wingspans, let their opponents score nearly as much in the post in more possessions.
But this is a challenge Williamson will likely face this season. He defended 1.3 post-up possessions per game last year, sixth in the league among players who played more than 20 games for a team.
More games might not necessarily tilt the balance for the Pelicans’ star, but the way forward for Williamson in the post is to use his strength to dislodge opponents and knock them off balance to complicate their chances of scoring.