It isn’t often that a team gets excited about their once No. 4 overall draft pick playing the role of seventh man to perfection in Season 6 of his NBA journey.
It’s even more rare when that same player is only in Year 2 of a five-year, $90-million contract extension.
Then again, the Patrick Williams experience has been full of flashes of above averageness to only be punched in the gut and completely let down.
So while his preseason has been encouraging, including his nine points in Tuesday’s 124-117 loss in Denver, pump the brakes.
As a matter of fact, slam them down to the floor for now.
It’s a wait-and-see for Williams, and frankly his own organization feels the same way.
“I see Patrick really being a part (of the rotation),” coach Billy Donovan said of his forward. “But the other thing too is Patrick’s minutes can change like anyone’s can change based on who we’re playing against and what the matchups look like, what the rotations look like, all that stuff. It will be pretty changeable throughout the course of the season I think.”
In other words, just because executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas has committed the checkbook to Williams, doesn’t mean the coach is committed to feeding the former Florida State standout heavy minutes.
Especially with second-year forward Matas Buzelis emerging in that starting spot Williams used to occupy and then the team going out and acquiring forward Isaac Okoro in a trade with Cleveland.
To Williams’ credit, he did work on his body over the summer, dropping some pounds so he can be a better fit in Donovan’s up-tempo offensive attack, and he has put together a solid training camp and preseason.
In the opener in Cleveland, Williams wasn’t even included in the 10-man rotation, but still eventually came off the bench to put in 16-plus minutes and score 11 points. His role in the rotation moved up in the rematch against the Cavs two nights later, finishing with eight points in 21-plus minutes and also posting a plus-8 in plus/minus.
His performance against Milwaukee on Sunday was his best showing with Williams playing 23-plus minutes, scoring 10 points, grabbing eight rebounds and handing out five assists, as well as finishing a plus-7.
Even in the loss to the Nuggets, Williams was a plus-1.
“What we’re basically talking about is consistency,” Donovan said. “To me as a coach when you’re working with these guys, certainly you want to help them with their skillset, but the skillset is purely based on making split-second decisions and reads on what’s going on in the game. There are things (Williams) can control, in my opinion, on every possession. He can get to the glass, he can get out in transition, he can do that. The other parts, when you have a young team, there’s going to be these ups and downs, these waves of development from these guys.
“I’ve seen some growth from Patrick. The thing you want to do is try and stack games together. I’ve always said that the best players in this league, if you take 10-game increments, there’s like one game out of 10 that they don’t play well. As it relates to Patrick, his minutes and stuff like that, a lot of it will be how consistent he’s playing. If it’s not going well, for anybody, we may have to go with someone else.”
A message that Williams is hearing loud and clear.
“This league is filled with so many good players, and the one thing that separates the great ones from the good ones is consistency,” Williams said. “For me, and I hate to beat a dead horse, but staying on the court (healthy) has been a big one. I’m feeling confident about my body.
“The product wasn’t what I wanted it to be (last season),” he added about his own performance. “You live with it.”