The balletic brutality of Zion Williamson

After missing much of his rookie season, Zion Williamson has proven to be worth the wait for NBA fans, combining grace and brutality in new ways night after night.

In the fifth game of Zion Williamson‘s NBA career, against the Memphis Grizzlies, the New Orleans Pelicans phenom streaked along the baseline and jumped to receive an ill-thrown lob from Jrue Holiday. He corralled the pass, which had already sailed beyond the backboard, with his left hand before bringing it back into play and laying it in off the glass. It was a play only a handful of players could have converted, like a modern recreation of Julius Erving’s infamous basket in the 1980 NBA Finals where he looped his arm beneath the backboard before acrobatically laying it in.

Yet for Zion, such displays are becoming increasingly commonplace — he is bowling over opponents in a way that is, if not unprecedented, extremely rare.

When you watch Zion play, you are immediately confronted by his size. He is stout and would be assumed rotund if not for his extreme athleticism. This unusual combination would make him a novelty if not for his dominance — he embodies a dancing bear who can also leap 40 inches into the air and evade his defenders with a grace that belies the heft of his body.

It would not be quite right to say Zion bullies his defenders near the hoop, but to deny that it happens would be equally foolhardy. It’s neither the grace nor the physical dominance that makes Zion such a unique and seemingly unguardable player, but it’s the combination of these two seemingly contradictory elements coming together in a startling and beautiful way.

Williamson walks with an awkward gait, shifting his weight from side to side with each step, almost as if he is trying and failing to cover up an obvious limp. Just watching him move in between plays, or off the court, it would be hard to imagine the transformation that occurs when he starts moving at full speed, in transition or making a cut behind a defender in order to convert an easy alley-oop. There’s both recklessness and grace in his movement, like a runaway train that is still somehow moving with a sense of direction and purpose.

All the focus on his size, power and athleticism make it difficult to realize just how skilled Zion already is as well, even if those skills are not yet fully formed. There have been plenty of extremely athletic young players who couldn’t do anything productive with their speed or leaping ability. Zion is not going to be one of them. He has already showcased good footwork in the post, along with a collection of feints and fake-outs to either get around his defender or force them into the air so he can get an open look. Williamson regularly displays great basketball instincts, knowing where to be for an offensive rebound, when to slip around his defender for alley-oop, or how to evade the defense in transition.

If you look at his shot profile, it’s more in line with a center with a limited offensive game than a wing with his athleticism and skill. According to NBA.com, over 90 percent of Williamson’s field goal attempts are at the rim, but the way in which he gets those shots is very different from a player who camps out near the rim, waiting for the ball to be thrown in to them.

Not only does he get these looks, but he converts them at a very high rate. If Williamson manages to keep his current pace, he will only be the eighth player in league history to shoot over 58 percent from the field on more than 15 field goal attempts per game. It’s a combination of volume and efficiency that has only rarely been seen in the NBA and just twice in the last 20 years.

His tenacity extends after the shot, as you can often see him running to the rim or navigating around the man who was just defending him a moment ago but is now trying to box him out with no luck. Williamson slithers around him, with a seemingly ingrained awareness of where the ball is about to bounce. The moment he bounds upward to snare the ball away from a man now boxing out a phantom, he is able to put it back, securing a hard-won, though easy look for his team. He currently has an offensive rebounding percentage of 10.9, which would place him at 15th in the league if he had played enough games to qualify, and would also make him the highest-ranking non-center in the NBA.

All NBA players are capable of performing athletic feats that fans can only dream of doing themselves. What makes Williamson so astonishing, apart from the sheer aesthetic beauty of his game, is that he is able to do things that are not only mere fantasies for fans but for his peers as well.

Another element making Zion so remarkable is that he is playing so well despite going against prevailing trends. With him having little trouble finding and making easy shots, questions about his skill as a shooter have not vanished, but now seem academic. Players as great and inimitable as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ben Simmons have had their games relentlessly nitpicked due to their lack of a jump shot, and while Giannis has come a long way in that regard, they both show that for rare talents such as themselves, and potentially Williamson as well, a reliable jumper may be more of a luxury than a necessity.

What Zion provides is not an antidote to the 3-heavy NBA we have seen over the last decade, but a counterpoint. He is too unique to be leading any type of vanguard of players like him, players who effortlessly score in the paint by both overpowering and outmaneuvering their opponents. Superstars in the NBA do not achieve greatness by emulating others but by carving out a special place of their own through force of will and ability, claiming land previously unable to be navigated. Zion Williamson, just a month into what appears sure to be a career full of unbelievable achievements, is already doing just that.