Lou Williams has put on some incredible performances this season for the LA Clippers. We look at this season’s place among all-time bench seasons.
Hearing Lou Williams‘ name called by excited announcers is a familiar occurrence for LA Clippers fans this year. Sweet Lou has, at times, single-handedly kept the Clippers in games. He’s had 6 games of 30 or more points, including the 45 point explosion against Minnesota. In 26 games out of the 53 he’s played, he’s scored at least 20 points. He’s tied his career high with 5.3 assists per game. And all this with exactly 0 starts.
On Thursday, Coach Doc Rivers announced that Landry Shamet would be starting alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Patrick Beverley. That basically ensures that, barring injuries, Lou Williams won’t start a game this year. With that in mind, I decided to look into how Lou’s season stacks up with other players’ seasons off the bench.
Williams has currently played in 53 out of 59 Clippers games, putting him on pace to play roughly 73 games. Using the excellent season finder tool by Basketball-Reference, I searched for all players in league history who played at least 70 games; that’s my base set, and that won’t change. I’ll start out by only looking at players who didn’t start a single game, to compare Lou’s bench season to other exclusively bench seasons. We’ll expand from there.
When it comes to scoring, Lou Will is in a league of his own. As it stands right now, the leader in points per game among my set is J.R. Smith in 2012-13 with New York. J.R. scored 18.1 points per game; Lou is well ahead of that, with 19.9 points per game. “Now Seth,” you might be saying, “points per game is an outdated metric which doesn’t take minutes played into account!” And you’re absolutely right. So let’s look at points per 36 minutes instead.
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Spoiler: it isn’t much different. The current per-36 minutes points leader is Walter Davis in 1988-89, with that insane no-defense all-tempo Denver Nuggets team. Davis scored 24.6 points per 36 minutes. Lou is currently dropping 27.4 points per 36. The gap actually widens when going from per game to per 36. I should also point out that Lou also has the number 7 season, the number 13 season and the number 25 season on this list (2014-15 with Toronto, 2010-11 with Philadelphia and 2008-09 with Philadelphia, respectively).
But Lou isn’t just scoring the ball. He’s been a fine passer, especially when dishing it to Montrezl Harrell. Among that same data set, Lou ranks first (!!!) in assists per game (5.3) and third in assists per 36 minutes (7.3), behind Darrell Walker in New York in 1983-84 and Scott Brooks in Minnesota in 1990-91. Again Lou shows up on this leaderboard more than once. On the per 36 minutes assists board, Lou Will has the 16th, 20th and 25th seasons (2010-11, 2007-08, 2008-09, respectively).
Now, zero games started may be a bit of a strict cutoff. Let’s expand that to players who started 10 games or fewer; that allows for guys who had the occasional fill-in for injury, but still mostly came off the bench.
Lou’s scoring still holds up very well here. Among players who started 10 games or fewer, Williams’ current season would be the fourth in points per game (behind Eddie Johnson ’88-’89, Ricky Pierce ’90-’91, Xavier McDaniel ’88-’89) and second in points per 36 minutes (behind John Drew ’83-’84).
The story is the same with his passing. Bumping the games started maximum up to 10 puts Lou’s current season at 2nd in assists per game (behind Stockton’s ridiculous 8.2 in ’86-’87) and fourth in assists per 36 minutes (behind Stockton, Spud Webb in ’85-’86 and Rod Strickland in ’88-’89).
PER backs up the fact that this has been an historic season for Lou Williams. If you’re not familiar, PER attempts to measure a player’s overall impact on the game. It’s calculated such that 15.0 is league average. For context, MVP frontrunners Giannis Antetokounmpo and James Harden are at PERs of 30.3 and 30.5, respectively, for the season. It’s not a perfect stat; it tends to overrate big men because they’re more efficient in general. But it’s a fairly good number to at least keep an eye on.
Sure enough, Lou Williams’ current season appears very high on the boards. Among players who started 10 games or fewer, Lou’s 2018-19 season ties for fifth, and he’s the first non bigman on the board (side note, shout out to Montrezl Harrell at number 2!). Interestingly enough, the player in 6th, right behind Lou Williams in 2018-19? Lou Williams in 2016-17.
Kawhi Leonard thought that Lou should’ve been an All-Star this year, as Ryan Snellings wrote about earlier in the week. It’s easy to see why Kawhi thought that, when looking at Lou’s stats. This isn’t just a good season off the bench, it’s been an historically great one. Sweet Lou is a perennial 6th Man of the Year candidate, but with this all-timer of a season, he should be a lock. We haven’t seen too many seasons from a pure bench player like this one.