Zion Williamson is finally healthy…and no one cares
For every season that Zion Williamson has been in the NBA, a similar question has followed him. Can he remain healthy throughout the duration of the year? Seemingly every year, there is a renewed level of optimism that despite all countering evidence, including reports and rumors of Zion refusing to follow the diet or training regiment the Pelicans are pushing for him to follow, this is the year that things will be different. This is the year that Zion will be the freakishly dominant physical force he was back at Duke, not only on opening night tip-off, but throughout the duration of the season. Well, it may have taken him until year 5, but Zion is seemingly finally healthy, the only problem is no one really seems to care. The time for All-Star voting has come and gone, and Zion seemed to barely generate any buzz at all. Despite leading the Pelicans to one of the top records in the West, and generally remaining healthy—only resting occasionally on front or back ends of back-to-backs—no one seems to regard Zion Williamson in the same light as before. In the first few years of Zion’s career he was often described as ‘the most physically dominant interior scorer since Shaq’, fast forward to now, and it seems the shimmer originally brought on by Zion’s freakish athletic abilities, has all but worn off.
Coby White—not Patrick Williams—is the prospect the Bulls have been waiting for
For a handful of years now, the Chicago Bulls have been stuck on the proverbial NBA treadmill of mediocrity. The team has struggled to build any sort of momentum around the trio of Zach Lavine, Demar Derozan, and Nikola Vucevic, especially since Lonzo Ball—the point guard who was supposed to tie it all together—went down. But even still, die-hard Chicago Bulls fans have continued to point towards Patrick Williams, (the 4th overall pick back in 2020), as a continued reason for optimism. Well, while it’s true that Williams has struggled with injuries since the beginning of his career, it’s also true that he just hasn’t shown that much tangible improvement while being healthy and on the court. As a rookie, Williams averaged a modest 9.2 ppg with shooting slashes of 48.3/39.1/72.8, fast forward three years to now, and Williams is all the way up to 10 ppg with shooting slashes of 44.3/39.9/78.8. Now while those numbers aren’t atrocious, they most certainly are not what you’d expect from a prospect who was once drawing comparisons to Kawhi Leonard. Coby White (the 7th overall pick in the 2019 draft), on the other hand, is finally popping for the Bulls. NBA players who are 24 years old and entering year 5 in the league, are generally ‘known’ commodities, and while they still may be tweaking and fine-tuning their game, they are typically not doing anything to drastically change the overall perception of them. Coby White however is doing his best to buck this trend, and show that he’s more than the off the bench heat-check guy many originally wrote him off to be. This year, Coby White is for the first time in his career showing steady and consistent signs of untapped star potential. If Coby White can continue putting up the numbers that he is, (19.4 ppg, 5.2 apg, on shooting splits of 46.5/40.2/82.4), and build upon them moving forward, the Bulls may soon realize they have a young guard on their roster who won’t be fighting for future 6th man of the year awards, but potential All-Star nods instead.
Jordan Poole is looking like a player trying to play his way not out of Washington, but out of the league
Prior to the 2023-2024 NBA season starting, the overwhelming consensus around the league on Jordan Poole was that he was going to GET HIS. No one was claiming that the Washington Wizards were going to be any good, or that Jordan Poole was going to impact winning all that much, but putting up electric scoring performances on a regular basis and averaging somewhere close to 30 ppg, that seemed very realistic. Fastworward to now, just about two thirds of the way through the season, and Jordan Poole has been downright awful. It seemed like a predetermined outcome that if Poole put up 20 ppg coming off the bench for the talented 2022-2023 Warriors, he would absolutely feast in a starting role for the largely talent-devoid Wizards. Instead, Poole’s scoring average has dipped all the way down to 15.7 ppg, and his shooting splits (40.3/29.7/86.4) are all the worst since his wildly inefficient rookie season. Whether Poole isn’t motivated to play for the lowly Wizards after competing for championships with the Warriors, or whether he’s still building his confidence back up following the infamous Draymond punch, the product that Jordan Poole is putting out on the court this season is not cutting it. Just a year or two ago, Poole looked like one of the premier young scorers in the league, but now, as things currently stand, it looks like Poole may not only be not long for Washington, but not long for the league in general.
