Monday, August 3, 2009
Introducing Shelden Williams
Shelden Williams, the newest Celtic, had a dominant college career at Duke, winning the 2005 and 2006 NABC Defensive Player of the Year Awards, becoming only the fifth player in history to earn the award two consecutive years. He holds Duke's career blocks record, single-season blocks record, and career rebounding record, while he is 17th in career blocks on the NCAA charts. He is the third player in ACC history to have 1,500 points, 1,000 rebounds and 350 blocks (joining Tim Duncan and Ralph Sampson). His 1,217 rebounds and 1,859 career points rank him seventh in ACC history and sixteenth in Duke history, respectively.
All of this led to Williams being selected 5th overall in the 2006 NBA draft, ahead of such players as Brandon Roy and Rajon Rondo. As seen by his highlight reel posted above however, his NBA career has been bustastic (Seriously, the only two youtube videos of Shelden Williams were the one posted and this. I posted the more impressive one). At least he apparently rebounds and plays D, and its not like Baby could finish at the rim either...
From ESPN;
2007-08 season: The fifth-overall pick in 2006 has had trouble gaining career traction, with a chronic inability to finish around the basket dampening his hopes of becoming a rotation player. Williams converted only 47.8 percent of his shots in the basket area, an extremely poor rate for a big man, and since he's also mediocre at best an outside shooter (37.6 percent on long 2s for his career), it doesn't leave a lot of alternatives for where to get his points. He at least got to the line at a high rate, which helped offset that woeful 43.4 percent mark from the floor. The one thing he really does well is rebound. Williams was eighth among power forwards in offensive rebound rate and 11th overall; unfortunately, he was unable to convert many of those offensive boards into buckets.
Scouting report: Williams is strong and willing to do the dirty work around the basket, but he's a poor finisher because of his lack of elevation and oftentimes can't get a shot off -- more than one delivery in 10 was blocked. He's good on the offensive glass because of his muscle and long arms but has to stop and gather himself before going up with a putback, and usually by then the defense has recovered. Defensively, Williams is a solid player, and if he's going to stick as a regular it will be because he does the heavy lifting at that end of the floor. He's a good shot-blocker and a physical post defender, and he plays hard.
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3 comments:
i dunno how you could say baby can't finish aroundt he rim...all tommy would ever talk about is baby's ability to "find the blue sky" under the hoop.
for real though, i think williams will do alright..he's not that old either..
The key thing to note is that baby had to find sky under the hoop. He has no ups, that's why he misses so many close range shots, and his layups look spectacular-he has to squirm and shoot off balance to get shots off around bigger players.
Anyway, I'm glad we picked up Williams for 1.3 million. A hard working guy with good size, post defense, an impressive rebound rate, and no offensive game is a perfectly good 4th or 5th big man in a rotation. Plus he's still young, and the C's have good big man couches-part of the reason big baby and perk have become as effective as they are at such a young age.
Leon powe?
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