re: Honest Zion talk for Emotional Intelligent Folks

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What the frick were some of you expecting to get out of Zion?

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The same effort/energy/motor/

That is 100% fair and logical to assume he'd bring with him.

We are seeing the opposite of that. Energy, nope he's giving us a lack of effort.

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The problem most of you seem to have is your own expectations. Which were clearly WAAAAYYY out of line with any reasonable reality.

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Nope. It's more than logical to expect him to come in and play hard on the defensive side of the ball. Why are you arguing that we should expect him to come in as a lazy player when he was a high energy dude at Duke?

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If you told me the guy we drafted the year after AD would be outpacing AD’s own growth curve and output during his respective point in his career, I wouldn’t be writing concern posts 34 games into his career

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What about defense? You're looking at his statline in a boxscore, you're not giving input on what is actually happening in games. We're a bottom 5 defense when he's on the court, and top 5 when he's off the court. That shite wasn't the case with AD when he first came in.

You don’t go from high motor to low motor. I think it’s a combination of fatigue and frustration from the offensive side of the ball. Fix the offense by scheme and/or roster/rotation changes to make it easier on him and if we still see the lack of effort, then it’s time to have this conversation.

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The same effort/energy/motor/

That is 100% fair and logical to assume he'd bring with him.

We are seeing the opposite of that. Energy, nope he's giving us a lack of effort.

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He’s not, but you all keep making up this head cannon.

He’s in a new system that requires a ton of responsibility on his part and his mental to physical responses aren’t as sharp at times. JJ, SVG, Adams, and all the vets have mentioned this issue with Ingram, Zion, Hayes, and most young players in general. You don’t just come in and “play defense.” You need to be able to read and process options and procedures lightning quick and then make the right reactions. I remember AD’s first two seasons and the sort of dumb shite threads people started on various forums claiming he didn’t put in effort on defense when in reality it was just wasn’t mentally ready yet.

If anything one of Zions flaws has been over committing, where he will too aggressively close out on a defender or over help and allow the other team to exploit him. SVG has mentioned this before.

It’s also not clear whether his burst is physical, or again, mental. SVG mentioned only in the last two games have they opened up the offense to let Zion do more than pretty much just low post actions. And only yesterday did he publicly say he has to do more to give Zion the right pieces around him by changing up the lineups because it isn’t fair for him.

Maybe let’s see what he looks like when he gets comfortable and the offense is actually opened up for him

I'm not even concerned with effort.

Sometimes Hayes looks totally lost and not trying but he always looks fairly athletic and explosive.

Zion looks like he’s wearing cement shoes on d even when he’s trying

Damn Zion went from the #1 franchise building block in the league to needing to see a shrink over the course of 11 games. This board is fantastic

I think we can all agree that Zion does some amazing things on the offensive end and is elite at putting up points, even with a limited skill set this early in his career and with zero spacing. And at the same time, he's been a disappointment on defense and need improvement there to reach his ceiling.

My position is that I'm going to wait and see if he's able to get there on that end. We've all heard that he's a hard worker when it comes to practice / training, so if that's the truth the improvement should come. If we're still seeing this output on defense late this season or early next, that will be really concerning.

Zion displayed everything you mentioned in his first ever NBA game. You could tell something changed after that game. I think the minutes restriction and trying to change his posture and all that messed with his head as time went on. He came in and took over against a Pop coached team. The feeling he gave in that first game isn't a fluke. Not many ppl in the world can do what he did that night. The way he did it no less. Then they took him out when he was in the middle of singlehandedly winning the game for us and he hasn't been the same since. He doesn't even snatched the ball from people after a rebound anymore.

It's a whole wait and see approach I'm not buying any longer. This off-season was my last excuse with his conditioning.

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Zion Williamson recorded 21 points and 12 rebounds last night. He now has 758 points in 34 career games.

He's the first player to reach the 750-point mark in fewer than 35 games since Allen Iverson in 1996-97

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Just a reminder that he's still doing some decent things even with a skillset that needs developing.

Thank you man. Just reading offensive stats is lazy take and doesn't projects future foresight of players improving