Pelicans' Zion Williamson ranked as 16th-best first option in the NBA

It's been well-established that to win an NBA title in today's league, a team needs to have a superstar leading the way, an offensive player capable of singlehandedly wrecking defensive game plans and taking over a series. We've seen plenty of mindblowing individual performances lead to titles recently.

For five years in a row, the league's champions were led by earth-shattering individual runs from some of the game's greatest stars: Kawhi Leonard with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, then LeBron James with the Los Angeles Lakers, followed by Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, Stephen Curry with the Golden State Warriors in 2022, and, lastly, Nikola Jokic notching his first title with the Denver Nuggets in 2023.

Even when a team doesn't have a standout individual showing, they need the threat of a superstar's dominance to win it all, like the Boston Celtics had with Jayson Tatum this past season. The New Orleans Pelicans have their sun, the center of their universe, in Zion Williamson. When watching Zion take over a game, it's easy to envision him leading his team all the way to the pinnacle. And yet, he's not even considered a top-15 first option in the NBA to some.

Yahoo! Sports ranks Zion Williamson as the 16th-best first option in the league

Yahoo! Sports's Ben Rohrbach recently released his ranking of the top alpha dogs in the NBA, a categorized list of the players he feels are most capable of singlehandedly carrying a team. Here's how Rohrbach defined a first option:

""He is the team's alpha — often by personality, always by ability. Ideally, everyone recognizes he is the top dog on the squad; teammates fall in line behind him, and opponents make him the primary focus of their game plans. Clutch situations typically run through your No. 1. He settles you down when you are on the wrong end of a run. He bails you out if possessions go haywire. He gets his.""

- Ben Rohrbach

And according to Rohrbach, Zion Williamson is only 16th when ranking the most dependable "alphas" in the NBA. The players who were placed ahead of him were, in order: Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jayson Tatum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Stephen Curry, Victor Wembanyama, Anthony Edwards, Joel Embiid, Kevin Durant, Jalen Brunson, LeBron James, Ja Morant, Donovan Mitchell, and Jimmy Butler.

There are quite a few glaring issues with Rohrbach's list: an unproven second-year Victo Wembanyama at seven, Joel Embiid at nine, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander top five after leading his first playoff run as a number one, etc.

Most of the names ahead of Zion have solid reasoning behind them, even if the actual placement feels off. For example, Jimmy Butler is a proven playoff riser who's led his team to two Finals and has earned the level of respect he carries. But, it can be argued that Zion Williamson could be as high as six on this list.

The onus is now on Zion to prove Rohrbach and the rest of his doubters wrong by leading the New Orleans Pelicans on an extended playoff run. No matter what his individual stats may look like, unless he can stay healthy and carry the Pelicans deep into the postseason, he'll continue to be discounted.