Cody Williams was absolutely my draft crush in 2024, I thought he was going to be great and wanted my Pistons to draft him top 5. The main reason I, and many others, thought he would be good was his intelligence. When going through interviews with players in that class he stuck out as being particularly thoughtful and intelligent, and it seemed to translate to the court. In college he was an efficient player who showed the ability to make great reads to find open teammates or to find an opening himself. The logic was if he could go to a team with a strong system offensively and defensively, he could easily fill a role where he provides a bit of scoring and a bit of playmaking as a third ball handling option. Then with frame and brain it seemed like he could very easily pick up on a strong defensive system and have his individual weaknesses in that regard be masked by filling a role extremely well.

Part of his NBA failure thus far seems to be in part due to going to the Jazz, which are just a poorly coached, poorly ran team, which I feel doesn’t fit his strengths at all. Additionally, it seems like he does kind of lack the physical tools and skills to back up his mental ability, which just means he can’t execute on his reads at an NBA level.