Chicago Bulls rookie Patrick Williams — who grew up modeling his game after Kawhi Leonard — matched up with the Los Angeles Clippers star for the 1st time. And the comparisons have already begun.
Chicago Bulls rookie Patrick Williams’ favorite player growing up was Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard.
Back in high school, as the similarities started to form, Williams started to mirror his game after Leonard, watching film to help develop his own game. During his lone year at college, Williams leaned into those similarities even further. And only 11 games into his NBA career, the comparisons have already begun.
Veteran Otto Porter Jr. invoked Leonard’s name during the preseason when he remarked about the size of Williams’ hands. Lakers star LeBron James did the same following their matchup last week in Los Angeles, noting that Williams’ hands forced him to alter how he handled the ball.
“I definitely see the potential that I have to be a player like him,” Williams said following the Bulls’ 130-127 loss to the Clippers on Sunday. “Like a two-way player that can get stops and then also be a reliable offensive talent. I talk a lot about being a two-way player and he’s kind of the model of a great two-way player.”
Williams was drafted less than two months ago and the 19-year-old is the second-youngest player in the entire NBA. But the Bulls have tossed him straight into the fire to begin his career. He did not have a summer league to help ease the transition, instead getting a shortened preseason and training camp. After not starting a game in college, he’s been in the starting lineup for all 11 Bulls games this season. And this month alone, Williams has been the team’s primary defender on Giannis Antetokounmpo, James and Leonard, who he matched up against for the first time Sunday afternoon.
It might be normal for a rookie to get a bit wide-eyed or feel some trepidation matching up against such titans of the sport. Instead, Williams seems to have accepted these assignments without hesitation. He embraces the idea of guarding the other team’s best player each night.
Slowing down these stars, however, is another story. Not much Williams or any of the other Bulls threw at Leonard was going to stop him. He scored 35 points on 14-for-22 shooting, including a 21-point third quarter.
During that third quarter, after Leonard (who went 5 of 5 from three in the period) hit multiple three-pointers in a row, coach Billy Donovan called a timeout. A live microphone after Donovan’s postgame press conference caught an off-camera exchange between the Bulls coach and Williams, where Donovan could be heard continuing to make a point of emphasis — “You see why I was riled up in that timeout? I wanted you to fight him” — before the zoom audio was quickly switched to mute.
“I think they kinda ran pretty much the same play three, four times in a row and he just came off and hit three, four threes in a row that got him going,” Williams said. “And I mean it was, I was there. I was contesting it. I think I might have even tipped one and it still went in, so. (Donovan) called a timeout and it was kind of just ‘figure it out.’ It wasn’t a game plan to stop that. I mean, great players, you’ve just gotta find a way and that’s kinda what he wanted me to do. So, that’s what he meant, when he said, just fight him.”
Williams has called these tough defensive assignments a learning experience — and he feels like he has gained something valuable from each of them.
Facing Antetokounmpo: “I learned that kinda you can’t lean on him. You can’t really play with your chest, you gotta play with your hands to make him uncomfortable.”
Facing James: “He’s really good at picking his spots and then sticking with what works. And then just also get his teammates involved. He was so aggressive there in the mid-post area that then I had to help it means they would have kicked out and found shooters.”
Facing Leonard: “From the mid-post, even when he wasn’t involved in the play he was telling guys where to be, things like that. He was just always involved, even if he wasn’t technically involved in the play. And then just defensively, how to use your hands and your arms to get deflections, get steals like that.”
After getting his assignment, Williams said he has been too locked into studying film and trying to find ways to defend to get too star-struck. He hasn’t had much time to reflect on the superstars he has now shared a court with during his whirlwind NBA debut, although he guessed the long plane ride from Los Angeles to Chicago might give him some time to consider the gamut he just ran.
“On the court, you really don’t get a chance to look at him as your idol or the guy that you look up to, he’s just the guy that I have to guard,” Williams said. “Coming into the game, it wasn’t any jitters or anything. He was just another guy that I had to guard. But for sure probably on the plane ride back I’ll probably start thinking, ‘Man, I really played against Kawhi Leonard, a guy that I’ve seen on film for so many years.’
“I watched so much film on him. I did the same thing with LeBron. Coming into the game it was just, ‘I’ve got to guard LeBron.’ But after the game, it was time to sit back and reflect on where I am and the journey to get here. It’s been a blessing, for sure, but I haven’t even really thought about him as ‘The Kawhi Leonard’ yet. It’s just another guy I had to guard.”
