PORTLAND, Ore. – The body is as good as it’s been since the Bulls made Patrick Williams the No. 4 overall selection in the 2020 draft.
There’s a reason his teammates now refer to him as “Skinny Pat.”
But the mind? That’s the real growth for Williams in Year 6.
His minutes and scoring average are career lows, he comes off the bench with the reserves, and he doesn’t know from game-to-game if he’s in the closing unit or just a bystander in crunch time. And for once Williams doesn’t care.
At least not enough to overthink it or beat himself up about it.
The result of that new-found freedom is Williams is playing on the plus side of plus/minus basketball for the first time in his career, he’s playing at the fastest pace he’s ever played at, and his assist percentage (9.2) is the second highest it’s ever been.
He did nothing to diminish those numbers in the latest late-game heroics from Nikola Vucevic on Wednesday, as Vucevic helped his team avoid a late-game collapse and hit the game-winning three at the horn in the 122-121 win over the Trail Blazers.
As for Williams, he finished with just five points, but grabbing five boards, finishing plus-3. And while there was a lot of finger pointing to go around in watching the Bulls (8-6) blow a 21-point third-quarter league, it wasn’t the bench or Williams, who outscored Portland 60-20.
When Portland went up four with 16 seconds left, it looked dire, but Coby White hit a three and the Bulls played the foul game. Jerami Grant split his free throws with eight seconds left, leaving the Bulls one last chance.
White drove toward the rim, ran into resistance and kicked it out to Vucevic, who didn’t blink and hit the three at the horn.
“I appreciate my teammates having the confidence in me,” Vucevic said of the latest game winner. “It felt good when I let it go. I felt like it had a good chance of going in.”
That it did.
As for Williams, just another game where he and the bench were able to make a difference.
“I’ve never really been a guy that’s really cared too much (about the outside noise),” Williams said. “I felt like I always held myself to a higher standard than anybody can ever hold me too, so if anything, that part has been what I’ve gotten better at. I’m not beating myself up anymore.
“Obviously, knowing my body now and what I need to do to be ready for the game helps. From that standpoint there’s less overthinking. ‘What am I doing in the game, how am I jumping, how am I landing?’ None of that. I’m just playing, just playing, and I still think I can play a lot better for sure, but in terms of making the read, miss a shot, make a shot, just a next-play mentality. That’s kind of when I play my best.”
What the Williams critics still might be holding on to is the idea the 6-foot-6 forward will never live up to his draft stock or the recent five-year, $90 million extension he signed in 2024, and they’re not wrong. He won’t.
But the team seems fine with that, and more importantly, Williams is over trying to chase that down.
He had his first summer in a long time where he was working on basketball rather than rehabbing an injury, and he loves coming off the bench to be a factor with the second unit.
“Everybody wants to get to that place,” Williams said. “If you ask anyone in (the locker room) they would say that, and if you ask them when do they play their best, they would say they play their best when they’re not overthinking. The mind just kind of goes and you give your body a chance for the muscle memory to kick in. It’s definitely a place that I had to get to. And there’s still a long way to go.”
Billy Donovan is all in on that journey.
The coach watched Williams put in a good summer of work and agreed with his player’s self-assessment on where he is through the early part of the 2025-26 campaign.
“You always want to see a player improve but there’s also got to be a place where you’ve got to accept who the player is,” Donovan said of Williams. “And the things that you know he can control and perform at a high level, you want to hold him accountable for those things.”
That’s what Donovan has been making sure to do. He wants Williams decisive and aggressive, and he’s been getting that for the most part.
“I know a lot of times when people look at the body, the size, everybody kind of wants more, but I do think he’s being aggressive when he needs to, the game has slowed down for him from the perspective that he’s a little more decisive,” Donovan said. “He’s in a good place mentally.”