I mean, sure, Zion's weaknesses are easy to see. But Gilbert just sounds like a disgruntled jerk who is still upset his own career didn't pan out how he thought it would.
From second round pick to $141 million in salary: he might be disgruntled, but his career went just fine.
He’s just getting onto the hot take train. And honestly, unlike most hot takes, he provided a bit of analysis.
We'll see. I think Arenas is missing a lot. He's discounting the moves Williamson did make, some of which are very good for an 18-year old - especially playing against teams that are loaded to stop him and when his coach (for whatever reason) is running an incredibly basic set of actions. Arenas also ran down the 14 rebounds in his opening but never followed through. There were some tough, contested rebounds in there, at key points of the game. And, maybe no surprise, agent 0 forgot to talk about team defense, where Williamson not only blocked shots he also altered many more. In the last 10 minutes I counted three misses that were clearly due to ZW coming over to help - including one where he then collected the rebound.
It's a funny thing about Williamson; he doesn't actually look like a man among boys all that often. It's not like peak LBJ or Jordan. But the numbers at the end of the game are eye-popping and there are definitely flashes. I also wonder how he will play after a year of NBA conditioning and a reasonable minutes load - not 40 straight minutes - on a team where he's doubled every time he touches the ball...
My guess is that he's something like Blake Griffin in his first year. Blake was an all star.
Krzyzewski had no choice, the team didn't have the right mix of talent to run anything more sophisticated. Jones isn't that special with the ball in his hands, and Duke was an uncharacteristically mediocre at best three-point shooting team this year. I could tell early in the season they weren't championship material unless Zion went on an epic run. He almost did, but not quite.
That being said, who would you pick 1st?
I'm in the Morant camp. He looks like he has the tools to be everything you'd want in a lead guard in today's NBA. If Barrett had shown more as a freshman, being a wing, I'd like to think he would be the top choice (
ideally, if you have the #1 pick you should hope that the best player in that draft is a wing). But Barrett looks like a guy who could struggle to get to the rim off the dribble at the NBA level, and his shot mechanics are poor. Zion does have the most theoretical upside, but I think it's more likely he's just 'good'. I'm not convinced he can physically dominate at the NBA level the way he did in college. Zion's path to stardom will be in his ability to get to the rim off the dribble, regardless of who switches onto him. That's a tough task for a guy who isn't likely to command much respect as a perimeter shooter.