The Step Back Composite NBA Draft Big Board: The best 30 draft prospects of the 2010s

No. 1 overall pick, New Orleans Pelicans, 2019

Zion Williamson is the best athlete that has come into the NBA in the last decade. He might be the best vertical athlete ever. His physical talents alone might be enough to take him No. 1 in a given year, and that he had any skill would be a bonus. That he might be a scheme-anchoring rim protector and an on-ball driving threat at some point? That’s what puts him into the franchise-changer category, and why some people have argued that he is in fact the best prospect of the past decade. His ability to seemingly osmose skills as he plays, most notably with his shooting in his brief rookie sample, certainly adds to that argument.

But what holds Williamson back from the top tier isn’t that he can’t shoot, or that he’s an injury risk due to his weight because neither is really a valid criticism. It’s instead that we’ve seen a similar player arrive in the NBA at the end of the last decade, and watched his career unfold as a lead-up to this moment. Blake Griffin was a similarly phenomenal athlete, and he certainly did help change the LA Clippers’ fortunes for the better. But without Chris Paul‘s addition to the team, would Griffin have eventually had the impact that Zion is expected to? Can you build a good team with a player of that mold? It’s not like Griffin didn’t have similar skills to Zion, but we saw that those skills did eventually have their limitations. Zion is, to the eye, something we rarely see on a basketball floor. But it’s not obvious what his combination of athleticism and skill-set means for winning, and that holds him back slightly.