Chicago Bulls: Five takeaways from the team’s first six games

1. Patrick Williams looks like a keeper

As disappointing as it was to see the Bulls front office pass up on a point guard in the draft, it’s hard to not see the logic in them taking Florida State swingman Patrick Williams with the fourth overall pick.

Heading into the draft, scouts and analytics folks praised Williams’ upside as an athletic 3-and-D player. While the cruder advanced metrics aren’t particularly high on his play early on (-0.019 win shares per 48 minutes), there is reason to think he could blossom into a quality player on both ends of the floor before the season ends.

Take this play here. Williams gets around a Thomas Bryant screen and sticks close enough to Bradley Beal. Even with Beal getting to the rim, Williams’ 6’11” wingspan makes this less than a gimme.

Here, Beal tries to break Williams down again, but Williams stays relatively disciplined and it forces Beal to toss a bad pass into traffic.

And this block on Kelly Oubre is reminiscent of much of his college footage.

Offensively, Williams has brought some value as a floor spacer (41.7 percent from deep) and has shown that he can put the ball on the deck if defenses give him too much space to work with or close out too sharply.

Williams still needs plenty of polish. Among other things, he still needs to figure out things like who to pay no mind to behind the arc (like on this play) and when to drive versus when to take a clean look when he has one. But the foundation for a fruitful career as a two-way wing is there and he’ll continue to build towards it throughout the season.