Zona's Marcus Williams, Likely Going Pro

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Marcus Williams needs to add strength, improve his shooting range, adjust the release of his jump shot, learn how to finish when he goes to the basket and (whew!) improve his quickness so he can shoot more free throws.
And this is meant as a compliment, because in the final three games of his freshman season, Williams averaged 19.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and made 19 of 22 free throws against UCLA, Wisconsin and Villanova.

He will not be in a Wildcat uniform much longer.

Williams is so close to a big payoff that those of us in the basketball audience cannot imagine how tempting it must be for him to call a news conference and say he will enter June's NBA draft.

Yes, this year. See ya.

"From the beginning of the year to now," UA coach Lute Olson said in Philadelphia, "I'm not sure we've ever had anyone make that kind of progress."

The first three small forwards likely to be chosen in the '06 draft are Gonzaga's Adam Morrison, UConn's Rudy Gay and Memphis' Rodney Carney.
After that? There's a guy from Argentina, another from Spain, and a third from Croatia. It is conceivable that Williams could be the seventh small forward selected this year, and perhaps a higher choice than his Arizona teammate, Hassan Adams.

A year from now, Williams is expected to be a lottery pick, conceivably among the first 10 selected, and there is no naivet? involved. He knows where he stands and what awaits him.

As a schoolboy in Seattle, Williams participated in playground games against two of the world's leading young small forwards: Bremerton's Marvin Williams and Seattle Prep's Martell Webster.

Marvin Williams went to North Carolina for one season, averaged a modest 11.3 points per game and bolted for the NBA, where he now is earning the first $3.9 million of a guaranteed $12.6 million deal with the Atlanta Hawks. He is two years older than Marcus.

Webster did not play collegiately. He went directly from high school to the Portland Trail Blazers, signing a guaranteed three-year contract worth $8.3 million. As recently as Monday he played 19 minutes and scored 11 points for the Blazers. He is one year older than Marcus.

The culture unalterably has changed.

Williams' freshman season at Arizona most closely parallels that of Chris Mills, who was a freshman at Kentucky in 1989, before transferring to Arizona. Both are about 6 feet 7 inches, with long arms and a gym-rat mentality.
Mills, the freshman, made 180 baskets in 32 games. Williams made 189 in 32 games.

Mills was 82 for 115 at the foul line. Williams was 82 for 113.
Mills averaged 14.2. Williams averaged 13.0.

The product of an earlier basketball generation, Mills spent five seasons in college, his final four at Arizona, which included a redshirt season in 1990. He was selected No. 22 in the 1993 draft ? about 10 spaces below his ability, possibly related to attitude and off-court issues ? and spent 10 years in the NBA, where he earned $37.3 million.

If Marcus Williams progresses as expected, he probably could double Mills' career earnings with his second NBA contract, sometime around 2011.
Mills surely was a better, more assertive rebounder than Williams, averaging 7.1 in his UA career. He was a big-game player who wanted the ball in the clutch. He shot .491 from three-point range as a senior, an astonishing figure for a small forward.

Nevertheless, Williams projects as a better player than Mills. Down the stretch this year, Williams began to exhibit the same, let-me-do-it tendencies. But he will not stay at Arizona long enough to shoot .832 from the foul line, as Mills did in his senior season. Nor will Williams be in a Wildcat uniform long enough to average 20.4 points per game, as Mills did in 1993, when Arizona went 17-1 in the Pac-10.

Williams will make the most important growth of his basketball life, as most NBA players do, on the job.

"Marcus is so aware of the things that he needs to do that he can't wait to start working on them," Olson said Tuesday. "He's already got his plans for the summer and what he needs to do. He's asked Fendi (Onobun) if he wants to come up and spend some time in Seattle, because they can work out up there against really good players. He's just amazing. He's a guy that we're probably not going to see around here for a whole lot of additional years." </div>

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