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Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
A breakout player not many saw coming this season has been Charlotte Hornets big man Mark Williams, the 15th overall pick of the 2022 draft. Williams was solid as a rookie averaging 9.0 points and 7.7 rebounds on 63.7 percent shooting with 1.0 nightly blocks. He was efficient enough to rank among the Top 150 players in the NBA for 2022-23 among various advanced stats, including VORP and BPM, peaking in the Top 40 league-wide in PER (19.8), but he didn’t really blow anyone outside of Charlotte away – the team going 27-55 and ranking third from last in net rating (-7.4) played a part in that.
Still, Williams has hit the ground running in 2023-24, putting up 13.6 points and 10.4 rebounds on 67.5 percent shooting through 14 games with 1.0 blocks and 0.9 steals. He’s been hugely impactful, making the Hornets 22.6 points per 100 possessions better during his time on the floor (before Wednesday night) thanks to his outstanding rebounding and impressive paint-protecting skills.
Giving a playmaker of LaMelo Ball’s caliber as excellent of a finisher around the basket as Williams has been borderline unfair so far, as the 21-year-old center is shooting 70.2 percent from within five feet of the basket in 2023-24, one of the tidiest marks in the league. Williams measured in with a 7-foot-6 wingspan at the combine, making him one of the longest players in the NBA already, and that, coupled with his athleticism, makes finishing like this look quite easy for the former Duke standout:
LaMelo Ball lobs it to Mark Williams for the Hornets alley-oop SLAM 💥pic.twitter.com/TU5ezM1oyl
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) November 23, 2023
Ahead of Charlotte’s Wednesday night game against the Washington Wizards – a 117-114 win for the Hornets in which Williams was responsible for 11 points, 15 rebounds, and three blocks (he was a plus-six on the evening) – the 7-footer already sat inside the Top 10 league-wide in both PER and WS/48. But even in the advanced metrics that don’t overly value low-risk, high-efficiency big men that don’t provide much in the way of self-creation or playmaking, such as BPM or VORP, Williams still rated quite highly, sitting 35th in the former and 43rd in the latter.
Still, it’s unclear what Williams’ exact ceiling is.
He shoots just 68.5 percent from the foul stripe, doesn’t boast much of a jumper (he has yet to attempt a three in the NBA) and his pick-and-roll finishing is just above average (he ranks in the league’s 63rd percentile at 1.21 points per possession in the playtype). However, Hornets head coach Steve Clifford seems certain Williams will develop a three-ball at some point, as he told our own Michael Scotto:
“Then the big key for him offensively is running the floor, screening, rolling, and eventually, he’ll be a three-point shooter. I don’t have any questions about that. I don’t know if it’ll be here early in the year. This is where the thumb injury set him back a little bit. But he’s a lot more instinctive offensively than I realized when we first got him.”
There are also more positives outside of the obvious: He’s a decent creator out of the short roll (1.4 assists nightly so far in just his second season, which is more than similar big men like Hassan Whiteside or Tyson Chandler ever averaged for a campaign) and he doesn’t try to do too much with the ball, though that could indicate a lack of a ceiling much higher than he’s showing right now.
He also already ranks third in the NBA in offensive rebound rate, which tells us he should be a monster on the glass for years to come. A big man who can pick up offensive rebounds and finish around the basket at such a high level is a major luxury for the modern NBA offense that is so reliant on long jumpers. What’s more, Williams can switch onto wings and guards at times without getting totally exposed, even if he isn’t the most fleet of foot quite yet. He battles when he has to defend ball-handlers and sometimes wins.
Several different screen-roll/pop coverages from Charlotte vs. Boston, including Mark Williams switching out on Jrue + Tatum — helps when Brandon Miller is able to switch out on stretch-5s, stay out of rotation vs. pops
Nice job from Mark, handling Jrue / BOS Ram pick-and-roll pic.twitter.com/i8vGHCwq94
— Brian Geisinger (@bgeis_bird) November 22, 2023
What’s clear is that in Williams, the Hornets have what could amount to a Top 12 center in the NBA over the coming years based just on his elite finishing in the paint and ability to gobble up rebounds on both ends.
We’ll see what Williams ultimately develops into – he’s probably not the next Bam Adebayo due to his lack of versatility on offense, but a Gen Z version of the aforementioned Chandler who can maybe shoot threes one day would be an enormous boost for Charlotte in its own right.
Either way, Hornets fans should rejoice in what they’ve seen out of their young starting center so far.
– Frank Urbina
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