Stats Stop the Zion Slander

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[Zion \\”Playing Football\\”](https://preview.redd.it/7t7c09k5949a1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=5236580117b741ea2d84629fcfd67b8dc8dabe92)

On Wednesday night, after watching Zion score 14 straight points and will the Pelicans to victory, a frustrated [D’Angelo Russell said](https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1608341232031502336), “He’s playing football, we playing basketball. We can’t touch him or guard him, so good for him.”

This isn’t the first time someone has criticized Zion for being “unskilled.” In 2019, [Gilbert Arenas said](https://clutchpoints.com/nba-news-gilbert-arenas-says-zion-williamson-has-no-true-skill-needed-for-next-level) that Z “has no true skill” and folks in r/NBA were [asking](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/d1ewqr/do_you_think_zion_williamson_is_actually_skilled/) “Do you think Zion Williamson is actually skilled or just relies on his great athleticism?” Just two months ago, in a postgame presser, [a reporter asked](https://www.basketballnetwork.net/latest-news/zion-williamson-reacts-to-basher-claiming-all-he-can-do-is-dunk) Zion to respond to a fan criticism that all he can do is dunk.

Anyone who has actually watched Zion knows this is slander. His touch and body control are incredible. His handle is quite good, especially for someone his size. His passing and vision are very impressive. But I thought it might be worth digging into the numbers to see what they might say about Zion’s relative reliance on athleticism (size, speed, vertical) versus skill (touch, shooting).

One way we might look at this is the proportion of a player’s shots that are dunks. Every part of basketball requires some combination of athleticism and skill, but it’s reasonable to assume that dunks lean more heavily toward athleticism while non-dunks lean more heavily toward skill. Zion has 41 dunks so far in 2022-2023, [representing 12.3 percent of his made shots](https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/w/willizi01.html#shooting), ranking him number 24 in the league for number of dunks. Of those ranked in the top [25 for number of dunks](https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2023_shooting.html#shooting_stats::28), only two players have dunks constituting a smaller percentage of their total shot attempts (Lauri Markkanen and Kristaps Porziņģis). This means that while Zion dunks a fair bit (#24 in the league in dunks), the vast majority of his shots (nearly 88% of them in fact) are NOT dunks and **he relies less on dunks than nearly any player that dunks regularly**.

This is even more true when we only look at shots close to the rim (between 0 and 3 feet from the rim). Looking at the rankings of the top 50 dunkers this season shows that the stat tracks the “eye test” of the athleticism-versus-skill spectrum. Those with highest proportion of close shots are, unsurprisingly, players for whom their athleticism plays a larger role than their skill: Kenyon Martin Jr. (#1 with 77% of close shots being dunks), Jericho Sims (#2 with 74%), Jalen Duren (#3 with 72%), Deandre Jordan (#4 with 68%). On the other end, players with a low proportion of close shots being dunks include more highly skilled players like Jaylen Brown (#49 with 21%), Domantas Sabonis (#48 with 22%), Lebron James (#47 with 23%), and Jayson Tatum (#44 with 27%). Guess who is #50? Zion Williamson (under 20%). **This means, that of the league’s top 50 dunkers, Zion, when near the rim, relies on dunks least of all.** (This, of course, excludes players like Steph and Kyrie who simply don’t dunk at all in an NBA game.)

His shooting farther from the rim (again, a skill-based metric) is also solid. This year, Zion is [shooting 42.7% on shots between 3 and 10 feet from the rim](https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/w/willizi01.html#shooting), not great but solidly above league average. Here’s a list of [players who are shooting within 1%-point of that](https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2023_shooting.html#shooting_stats::19) or worse at that range: Lebron James (43.7%), Jayson Tatum (43.7%), Devin Booker (42.5%), Anthony Edwards (42.5%), Kyle Lowry (41.9%), and Ja Morant (40.2%). Zion also has a higher FG% than all of them except Booker when shooting between 10 and 16 feet from the rim. (He only rarely shoots from between 10 and 16 feet, but he’s made half of those.)

The sample size for his three-pointers is admittedly extremely small in large part because teams still haven’t figured out how to stop him inside so why should he do anything different? But the numbers are solid here too. Zion has only taken 19 three-pointers and made 7 for a 3FG% of 37% or above league average. But of those 19 attempts, [3 were taken very late in the shot clock](https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1629627/shots-dash?PerMode=Totals) (4 seconds or less). Removing those 3 attempts, Zion is shooting 7 for 16 from three for 44%. Every player’s FG% suffers from late shot clock attempts but, when they make up a relatively large portion of your attempts from three, like with Zion, it will matter a lot more.

But he’s pretty much unstoppable when it comes to getting to and finishing at the rim. Just watch his [first two field goals](https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&ContextMeasure=FGM&EndPeriod=0&EndRange=28800&GameID=0022200520&PlayerID=1629627&RangeType=0&Season=2022-23&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&StartPeriod=0&StartRange=0&TeamID=1610612740&flag=3&sct=plot&section=game) from the MIN game: behind the back, hesitation right-to-left crossover, finishing high off the glass in a way that only a handful of players can. The man is crazy skilled.

Your eyes should tell you as much. But so do the numbers.

“He’s playing football, we playing basketball. We can’t touch him or guard him, so good for him.” – D-Lo after Zion's 43-point career night

(via @Timberwolves) pic.twitter.com/hYdn0MfMsU

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 29, 2022

by ImpossibleBedroom468