Zion Williamson no longer dunks. Well, that’s not true: he attempted 65 dunks this season, or about one per game. But he didn’t attempt any against the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday night, despite all of his field goals coming from inside the paint — and most of them were in the restricted area. He scored 34 points and his New Orleans Pelicans won 112-104. And while there was something incredible about each of his buckets, there’s no doubt: Williamson is now a layup artist, putting himself on the scoreboard in a decidedly less pyrotechnic way than before.
Many young, muscular dunkers follow this path. Their knees and feet, destroyed by crunchy post-slam landings, demand it. The drunken, post-biological hype that greets the shocking debut of their career dwindles to a calmer appreciation, shared mostly between fans of said player’s home team and those studious enough to follow the second-act star in his era less aesthetically mind-boggling. Zion’s second chance came early, however: He’s only 23 and playing the first year of his first big contract, which is full of performance-related financial stipulations put in place due to the turbulence of the first four years of his career .
At this still fairly green age, Williamson has already changed a lot and has the posture and grimace of a man more than a decade in the NBA: he missed more than 200 games due to injury, was criticized for her body and diet, and had gnarly, formative romantic episodes exposed to a level no one would want. But the discourse about it has become more muted of late. He’s healthier, having played in 55 of a possible 66 games, as he and the Pelicans appear to have finally figured out a plan to move him forward as the season goes on; his bouncing athleticism is now at its peak, his drives to the rim more and more unmanageable each week.
He also looks leaner, and perhaps most important of all: those layups. They are the work of a weathered craftsman, more André Miller than Ja Morant. His final package is no longer viral fodder, unless the Internet is about to be made up exclusively of 42-year-old men who appreciate subtle grace and finesse more than loud, nasty, bombastic stuff for which Zion was known for. Now he uses as many of his powers as necessary. This is partly because he better understands the benefits he gets from his feathery touch; his ability to bring the ball home from weird, kinetic body angles better than anyone except maybe Nikola Jokic.
But he now also has a father who dominates down the aisle with reading angles. Zion can take three dribbles and use his shoulders to create an individual lane, yes. But he can also jump just a little bit into a defender’s realm, while remaining airborne exactly long enough to release the ball after their competing arms have come down a bit. He can change shooting hands when attacking. He can go into Moses Malone mode and outplay a crowd for a rebound and putback. He can recognize defenses that are trying too hard on Brandon Ingram or CJ McCollum, and rush into the lane, off-ball, for a quick pass and finish. He can turn, duck and score while almost falling. If all else fails, he can forgo the big man battlefield by stopping dead in his tracks and unleashing a high-arcing teardrop shot at everything. These are all ways to be a layup, and Zion is the most formidable of those alive today. He is Mr. Layup.
Surround Williamson with playmakers like Ingram and McCollum, three-and-D wings like Trey Murphy III and Herb Jones, a huge skilled center in Jonas Valanciunas, and perpetual rascals like Jose Alvarado, Larry Nance Jr., and Naji.” The Knife” Marshall. and you have a whole constellation of talent around the ultra-dense basketball planet that is Zion. The Pelicans would be clear underdogs against the defending champion Denver Nuggets, but for any other Western Conference playoff opponents they might field, fear of the bird is an appropriate feeling.
Pelicans fans still can’t believe what’s happening, even though their team’s ascendancy is starting to seem obvious. It’s been a star-filled decade and a half for this post-Hornets franchise, with just one playoff victory in the bayou. And in the Williamson/Ingram years, especially, the injuries seemed to occur in a timing and pattern that suggested God didn’t want them to succeed. But usually this has already happened to them by mid-March. Thriving and curse-free, with 16 games remaining, the Pelicans find themselves in territory that is both uncharted and promising.
