38 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, 65% shooting rate, and 18 free throws, which is the data Zion Williamson played against the Lone Ranger on March 28. After the game, the lone ranger coach Carlisle He expressed sincere praise to Zion:
"He is a special player and undoubtedly a good player. In fact, we have made a good defense against him, but he is really a beast". "Defending him is really a difficult challenge. He keeps looking for confrontation, It's a control guard O'Neill Style player ”。
In the basketball world, fans are bombarded with huge amounts of information every day, 80% of which may be meaningless words. In fact, the small circle of NBA is not much different from the workplace that you and I are familiar with. "Online fool, offline brother X" is always the survival rule that practitioners need to remember. In this context, whenever someone holds XX as the next one, they can probably ignore it directly.
However, when Carlyle uttered "O'Neill" to describe a 20-year-old young man, the situation was quite different. In fact, as a symbol of dominance, the media almost never regard "O'Neal" as a player modification 。 In terms of visual impact, "O'Neill" is even more powerful than“ Jordan ”The more sacred adjectives, because these three words have their own shock waves in the NBA, represent a kind of near destructive force of famine, and are epic templates that ignore any era system.
Is it really appropriate to use "O'Neal" (especially the technical version of point guard) to describe Zion Williamson, a sophomore?
Last year, Zion, who was still a rookie, made a final poem for his career with his terrible restricted area ability, and this season Zion has deepened this advantage. Since the season, Zion has made 585 shots in the reasonable collision zone, leading the league. How many positions is he ahead of the second place? The second place has only 397 shots in this area, and this second place is another letter brother called contemporary O'Neill.
It is always meaningful to look at the terminal capacity in combination with output and efficiency. It is better not to invest in high output and low efficiency. Of course, the more output and high efficiency, the better. Zion undoubtedly belongs to the latter. His shooting rate in this area is as high as 67.4%. Among those who do not belong to the center, only James, Fox, Sidis Young and Jay Brown have higher shooting rates than him. However, the number of shots taken by these people is obviously much lower than that of Zion, and from the perspective of actual competition, their defense intensity in this area is also much lower than that of Zion.
Violent basketball confrontation is Zion's perception of being called O'Neal. Carlyle described Zion's attack frame scene like this: "He rushed to defend quickly, just like a fast train, not an ordinary train. He really needs courage to defend".
However, it is not enough just to be ferocious and violent. It is the essence of our conviction that Zion and O'Neill are the same kind that we can maintain a delicate and stable ending ability after a high-intensity confrontation.
Because Shaquille O'Neal completely crushed his opponent's physical advantage, fans often ignored his delicate hand work in the near frame. The same is true of Zion. In addition to its impressive dunk, Zion's skill of finding boards from all angles in the air after breaking through and taking off can be classified as the intangible cultural heritage of the NBA, just as teammate Ingram commented on his technology, "He is familiar with any angle of the rebounds and knows all the angles that can help him to hit the ball. That's really wonderful. Sometimes it can be 2+1, which is really wonderful.".
From this point of view, Zion should belong to the same echelon as those men in the history of basket blasting. It is a super efficient near basket bomber, and probably needs an outside line that can take him away. But notice that Carlyle's description is "O'Neal with point guard technology", which actually reveals Zion's most distinctive feature: the ability to hold the ball. The biggest difference between Zhang Fei, a thick, medium and thin embroidery, and those birds and beasts who pile muscles into their brains is their ability to "handle balls".
You may not believe it. This season, Zion is gradually taking over more and more attacking ball rights of Pelicans. Compared with Stoudemire in the Suns period, who works near the three second zone, Zion is increasingly starting to attack from the outside like a guard. Before the All Star Weekend, Zion averaged 57.2 touches, ranking third in the team (Ball first, Ingram second). But after the All Star Weekend, Ball still ranked first, while Zion and Ingram tied for second in the team with 65.5 times. In terms of the total number of ball touches, the proportion of all star post Zion's ball touches has increased from 13% to 15%, which is at the same level as the secondary core of teams like Hayward, Conley and Adebayor.
Zion's more observation with the ball and more dribbling and driving attacks are also reflected in the data. After the All Star Weekend, the length of each touch in Zion increased from 2.83 seconds to 3.72 seconds, and the number of each receive increased from 2.22 to 3.25. At the same time, these changes also turned into practical assists.
It's true that Zion is taking over the work of the point guard. Some people have called him "Point Zion", but can we just classify Zion as a "point guard"?
It is easy to find negative views in the United States. Jackie McMulan, a female journalist, said in The Jump: "I'm not going to say that Zion is a point guard. He has a good vision and often makes beautiful choices. He sends 3.5 assists every game and also has excellent passes, but I don't think he will be Dongqi or Kidd."
Richard Jefferson echoed this view: "Zion is indeed a special player, but he is the so-called point guard? We just see that he is dominating the team's attack. I prefer to call him a point forward. I agree with Jackie's view. He has a lot of work to do before we call Zion a point guard."
The above discussion points out the limitations of our description of Zion's basketball style. He does not completely copy the existence of O'Neal. Compared with O'Neal, who is proficient in basketball, Zion has some more diversification in line with contemporary basketball aesthetics, but the characteristics brought about by these diversification cannot classify Zion as a guard in our common cognition.
It seems more appropriate to describe Zion with a ball holding striker? A Ben Simmons full of scoring skills? Or is it Griffin whose peak of skill coincides with that of body at the same time? However, it is obvious that the field average is close to 27 points. Zion's destructive power has exceeded the above two descriptions. It is futile and meaningless to find a suitable template for Zion. As Jackie McMulan said, "We don't need to compare Shaquille O'Neal and Zion. We shouldn't compare players with different attributes, apples and oranges, pears and cherries.". What we need to be clear about is how to correctly use Zion, a strange species in the basketball world - which is exactly the pain point of the Pelican team today.
Our understanding of the word "use" has two levels. The first is the micro level of "use" on the player level. This level includes the playing methods and positioning mentioned above, and how to use Zion properly. The weight of 300 pounds and the bouncing of Feitiandundi not only made Zion gain dominance, but also gained potential injuries. Almost everyone talks about Zion in this way - "The combination of his weight and athletic ability is really great, but will he be easily injured?"
Peter Viad (a professor of physical fitness and sports mechanics) described Zion's sports ability like this: "Before him, there were many heavy players who could jump, such as James and Buckley But James doesn't have 300 pounds. Although Buckley is similar to him, Buckley doesn't have this exaggerated stagnancy. "
Viad pointed out that the force required for Zion's take-off dunk was too large, and the moment of the dunk was not enough to help him release these forces, so he could only release them by landing, which led him to lose his balance when the dunk landed, and accumulated the force to his knees.
For this reason, he also calculated the force needed for Zion to jump and dunk, which is about 2513 cattle. James needs 2111 cattle, Boerzingis needs 1769 cattle, and Jordan needs 1648 cattle. It is not difficult to see that the hidden dangers of injuries and diseases in Zion are not groundless.
Of course, the Pelican is helping Zion solve this problem. The player himself also said, "I am improving my landing action. I should not land vertically, and should not put all the weight on my legs.". During the last off-season, the Pelican coaching team also made Zion lose weight and shape, which obviously helped to reduce Zion's sports loss.
Both Bauer and Ingram solved their personal technical problems under the guidance of the Pelican coaching team. It seems that Zion is the same. So far this season, he has only missed two games, which is much more than the attendance rate of less than half last season.
However, there are two levels of Pelicans' use of Zion. The other level is the macro use of players, that is, how to configure an appropriate system for Zion?
For nearly one and a half seasons from last year to today, fans can see that Zion and Ingram have poor chemical reactions, not only because they can't compete with Ingram, but also because of the compatibility of Zion and Pelicans.
If you use complicated basketball language to explain this problem, you can say that Zion is the ball holding forward and Ingram is also the ball holding forward, then one of them must make a compromise; Or, Ingram needs to break through space, Zion needs more, and there is Adams at the bottom of the basket... It can even talk about the efficiency of space utilization. The best shooter is Bauer's team (7.8 three-point shots, 38.5% shooting rate). How can we make full use of space?
But we don't need to make things so complicated. In a word, we can make clear the problem Zion faces in pelicans - Zion is a strange species in the basketball world, but pelicans are also equipped with strange species in almost every position. Can it not be chaotic?
It is easy to see that if the Pelican does not solve this problem, it will not be able to talk about the "correct use of Zion".
From the further extension of the lineup configuration between Zion and Pelican, the result is nothing more than the problem of achievements. The team configuration is poor, and the result is that the performance is not satisfactory.
For Zion, a son of heaven, it is inevitable to target another young and famous Dongqi. Zion, who was also selected as an All Star in the second season, is obviously inferior compared with Dongqi, and the reason why Zion is inferior is nothing but its achievements. After all, Dongqi brought the lone ranger into the playoffs in his second season, and Zion seems difficult to achieve this goal.
However, this comparison seems to be unfair to Zion. This injustice comes from Zion's own limitations, which can also be said to be the limitations of non control guards or non organizational cores. For Zion, the playing method and positioning decide that he cannot take all the ball rights like Dongqi, and the more the better he can open the door to the ball rights. This is not only the limitation of the comparison between Zion and Dongqi, but also the limitation of the comparison between unorganized core and organizational core in the whole basketball world.
This also led to the result that Zion must eat the configuration of team-mates, especially the core organization with which he worked.
Then, further extending from this point of view, eating teammate configuration is equivalent to eating the operational ability of the management. But the Pelican is just a small market team and a weak team. The free market is half closed for the Pelican. This determines that Pelicans need to pay a premium cost to recruit players in the free player market. Draft selection is the best way for them to strengthen the cost performance ratio. But if they want to win, there is no right to draft. Therefore, the conflict between winning and team building is inevitable.
So, how about borrowing future resources to exchange current combat power? The breakup between Pelican and Davis is a lesson from the past.
In this case, how can the pelican strengthen its hands and feet? How to use Zion correctly? This is inevitably a question that needs to be considered.
Small ball market matches with strong talent, and the end of the story is often unhappy. Zion is just the son of Chosen since childhood. Even in the small ball market, there are countless media reporters watching his performance on the court, and countless fans watching his every move in front of the screen, waiting to be a keyboard man. Xiaozhushi cannot help Zion to shield itself from noise, but can only amplify his problem.
But his problem is that he lost - because of the nature of the team.
Matt Barnes said: "Zion is still a beginner in the NBA. Once he becomes mature, it is worth watching how he learns to take over the game in his third and fourth years." If we carefully review this sentence, what will happen if Zion, who learned to take over the game in the third and fourth years, is trapped in the Pelican small ball market and cannot win the game?
