Chicago Bulls that Finished the Season Strong: Patrick Williams
The rookie forward didn’t have the greatest debut season if you go strictly off box score tracking. Which is a great time to remind everyone that there is an incredible amount of things to the game that don’t show up in the box score.
Not only did Williams continue with his season-long assignments on the opposing team’s best scorers he also finished the season strong from an efficiency standpoint on the offensive end. That despite the well-known rookie wall most players hit at some point in their first NBA season.
Now, to be fair, Williams didn’t carry a significant load offensively over the course of the season. That doesn’t take away from the work he had to put in defensively and the endurance it takes to play in NBA games in general.
Williams averaged 10.6 points per game in the month of May, pretty similar to his entire season statistics. Not very overwhelming if taken alone as the fourth overall pick.
Important context is that he shot 52.2 percent from the field and 50 percent from behind the arc. It was only a nine-game sample size, but it was the highest-scoring month for the rookie since February, when he also averaged 10.6 points per game.
That’s the highest number he has put up in a month up until this point in his career. Impressively, May was also the first time he shot over 50 percent from the field over the course of a single month.
That’s very promising for fans of the Bulls. The rookie has a bright future in the NBA and his confidence is only going to grow from strong performances as well as an off-season to work on his game.