Rookies Deconstructed: Willie Cauley-Stein

This season's rookie class could be something special. There is talent and depth, size and skill, and the promise that there could be a few transcendent players in the mix. Oddly, though, some elements of each player's game and physical presentation feel familiar. Rookies Deconstructed is a series that means to take each rookie apart, identifying the building blocks we know and the natural comparisons that emerge and appreciating how they come together in ways that are radically and invigoratingly new. Because these are rookies, with just under half a season under the belts, some comparisons are necessarily forward-looking.

The peak of Tyson Chandler was shaped like the summit of Grand Teton. The summit is a craggy and forbidding sharkfin, narrow at the top and dropping away on all sides; the highest point is his brilliant, title-winning season with the Dallas Mavericks. It may or may not be his best NBA campaign, but Chandler has a Defensive Player of the Year award from that season to keep his championship ring company. So it's good enough.

Chandler's apex season saw him fully harness the elite size and remarkable athleticism that he has always possessed, tempered with the wisdom of a career's worth of trial and error. It wasn't just that Chandler protected the rim or dunked everything in sight—he's generally done that in every one of his NBA season—so much as he thoroughly controlled the area around the basket and helped bind together a band of tattered misfits into a championship team.

Before he arrived in Dallas, Chandler had already established himself as a rim-rolling, shot-deterring force. But the context of that title team gave his individual talents purpose and meaning. In the Finals, fear of Chandler disrupted the Heat's offense and the unshakeable confidence of LeBron James. The way Chandler sliced through the line, sucking in defenders on his way to catching a lob, was made more important because of how it opened the floor for Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry. After leaving Dallas, Chandler continued to block shots and post absurd field goal percentages but he was never again such a fundamental part of a team's foundation.

This is one idealized vision for the future of Willie Cauley-Stein, ruling his kingdom—a rectangular one, painted in a rich and regal shade of purple—with an iron fist. WCS already has Chandler's bounce and defensive intensity, and is in hot pursuit of his refinement and attention to detail. He is already an above-average rim protector and seems to have that dive-to-the-rim-and-make-a-poster thing down pretty well. As with the young Chandler, Cauley-Stein's size and athleticism leaves the distinct taste of potential still to be realized.

But the real appeal of Cauley-Stein is not his potential to be the New Orleans or New York versions of Chandler, but to do an impersonation of him in Dallas—to be the heart and backbone of a team that excels at both ends of the floor, and to not just make offensive and defensive highlights, but to make them in service of a regime that was cruel and unyielding when it came to opportunities at the rim.

The other idealized vision for Cauley-Stein's future is control in the of zenith-period Shawn Marion. Whereas Chandler's domain was distinct, all stone walls and heavy wooden battering rams, Marion was awesomely erosive, slipping into every crack and wearing away at the competition wherever possible. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire are often credited as the on-court arbiters of Seven Seconds or Less Suns success, but it was Marion's versatility that really unlocked the entire scheme.

He defended wings and front court players, blocked shots, forced steals, and crashed the glass. Marion's defensive versatility was that he had a tool for every situation. If the situation called for physical strength, length, quick feet, or quicker hands, Marion was there with the appropriate mix. He was that good, and could do that many things.

On offense, Marion played a similarly fluid game. He shot three-pointers respectably, but it was his ability to fill a lane in transition and move to open space in the half-court that made him special. He was a perfect complementary piece because he could do just enough of everything; before the NBA realized how important this type of player was, Marion was that type of player.

Slotting Cauley-Stein into a Marion-like role is a little more of a reach—he's bigger, but also much more raw and much less accomplished on the perimeter. But it's also pretty fun, seeing as Cauley-Stein is about five inches taller than Marion was. A legitimate center who can play as far down the positional scale as Marion did is a rare thing indeed. Cauley-Stein doesn't quite have the skills yet to bring this idea to bloom, making plays off the dribble is a stretch, and his passing is merely passable. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to visualize him moving through offensive space the way Marion did, cutting along the baseline, diving on the weakside, flying in on the fastbreak.

A Marion impersonation on defense would probably be a bit of a stretch as well, for Cauley-Stein or any other living human, but the way in which Cauley-Stein defends bigs suggests even wilder possibilities. Figuring out whether he could be the primary defender for Kevin Durant or LeBron James still requires some field testing, but WCS moves so well on defense, and with such intensity, that it's hard not to let your imagination run. For players his age and his size, he's already in elite territory in terms of blocks and steals. And he's not remotely finished as a player.

There is a risk in trying to have Cauley-Stein do too much, for trying to stretch his potential in every direction at once. But he already seems to be flying pretty close to the sun and the wax on those wings still looks rock solid.

A comparison to Anthony Randolph is, on its face, not especially flattering. The 14th pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, Randolph is still just 26 years old, just about a year younger than Stephen Curry. He is also wrapping up his second season in Russia after passing through through four different NBA teams without leaving much of a mark. He could have been anything, but instead Randolph is potential personified.

He's also not terribly likely to play in the NBA again, which makes Randolph a hypothetical question: what would it look like if we created a perfect body for basketball and then gave it just a little bit of everything in the skill department? On paper, Randolph was six feet and ten inches of smooth muscle. He could handle the ball and pass like a guard, shoot like a wing, play inside with the bigs, and defend anyone. In reality, his gift for a doing a little bit of everything didn't add up to much at all. None of it was enough.

Randolph represents two different basketball ideals—the Versatile Forward and the Little Man In Big Body. The Versatile Forward sits in the middle of the positional scale with a skill set that spider webs in all directions. This mythical beast can go anywhere and do anything on a basketball court. Throughout history there have been sightings—Kevin Garnett, Marion, a young monster by the name of Kawhi Leonard—but there have been just as many who can't quite deliver on the promise.

For a player like Randolph, the challenge of doing everything became overwhelming. It meant spreading his talent thin, wearing out holes in the weaker spots as he repeatedly fell back on what could have made him special instead of what he was able to do well at that moment. Recalibrating for specialization might have lowered Randolph's ceiling, but it might have allowed him to find a niche, or at least keep him in the NBA into his late twenties.

The Little Man In Big Body is an idealization that often overlaps with the Versatile Forward, but here the defining characteristic is physical—guard skills in a much larger package. The same impact with a few extra inches of height and wingspan is something every scout dreams about. This idealization also disintegrates under a very specific sort of hubris, an imbalance between relying on the body and the unique skills. Sometimes a big man has to be a big man, and when they lose that essential identity we end up with a 6'10 Jordan Crawford, and the aforementioned little big man winds up in Russia, or China, or otherwise elsewhere.

Cauley-Stein is not, at least at this point, nearly as lost as Randolph was. His defense is already far superior and his narrower focus on offense keeps him efficient. However, he is like Randolph in that his potential still defines him—what he is right now is not nearly as interesting as what he could be. Making the most of that hypothetical future means finding the right identity. Cauley-Stein may not turn out to be as good as Chandler or as Marion, but figuring out where he sits on the spectrum in between could help him avoid the path of Anthony Randolph. Cauley-Stein doesn't need much skill development to walk the path of Tyson Chandler—just practice to make perfect and a team context that will anchor him into the right role. A Marion future is a little more ambitious, and involves more moving parts to synchronize, but at his size Cauley-Stein could be that revolutionary.

This has been mostly a lost season for the Sacramento Kings, and Cauley-Stein has already lost a good portion of it himself to a dislocated finger. He is part of a deep frontcourt rotation, and is defining his role on a team that could change its coach, and by extension its scheme, at any moment. This season has mostly been about getting on the floor and figuring out exactly how much of this raw talent he has to work with. The shape of it is not necessarily important right now. Someday soon, it will be.