Is Zion Williamson already a top-50 NBA star?

Can Zion Williamson live up to the hype as a rookie?

Our NBArank panel placed the No. 1 overall pick of this year's draft 42nd, the highest ever for a first-year player in the nine seasons we've been doing NBArank. That's understandable given Williamson is one of the most promising players to enter the league in recent memory.

Still, is it fair to expect any 19-year-old rookie to be one of the league's top 50 players right away? After his first appearance with the New Orleans Pelicans at the NBA summer league was cut short by a bone bruise in his left knee, Williamson still has to answer questions about whether his conditioning is ready for the speed of the NBA game. So, is his lofty NBArank placement reasonable?

ESPN NBA experts Kevin Pelton and Mike Schmitz discuss.

How good have the top rookies been?

Kevin Pelton: Williamson shattered the NBArank record for a rookie. Not only had none ever placed in the top 50, there weren't even any in the top 60. Here are the previous leaders among rookies in NBArank:

I wouldn't say the NBArank panel is really sleeping on rookies or overrating them. There have, in fact, been a couple of handfuls of rookies who have finished their first year in the top 50 in my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric.

A similar but slightly different group has ranked in the top 50 in wins produced based on ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM):

Just three players appear on both lists -- Nikola Jokic, Kristaps Porzingis and Ben Simmons -- and the last of those three players was a year removed from the draft, having missed his entire first season in the NBA to injury.

One issue is that while we know some rookies will perform at a top-50 level, identifying those players ahead of time is tricky. Going into their first seasons, Porzingis and Jokic were considered long-term projects. They ranked 192nd and 294th, respectively, in NBArank. Meanwhile, the rookies our panel did put in the top 75 had mixed results in Year 1.

NBArank voting did manage to pick out three rookies who finished in the top 50 in WARP but none who did so in RPM wins. And one of the six players, Dennis Smith Jr., rated little better than replacement as a rookie.

I'm a little surprised that Williamson ranks so much higher than his New Orleans predecessor Anthony Davis, the only college player with a better projection by my consensus model than Williamson. It also looks as if Doncic -- who had a higher projection with several years of European stats than either of the one-and-done NCAA products -- was underrated last year.

Still, I think putting Williamson in the top 50 looks reasonable based on his pedigree and the track record of rookies.

How will Zion fit in New Orleans?

Mike Schmitz: Living up to such a lofty ranking will come down to how Williamson is used as a rookie, a highly debated topic leading up to the 2019 draft.

I've contended that Williamson's most lethal position is small-ball center. With the roster Pelicans exec David Griffin and his group assembled, New Orleans figures to have a much more fluid offense with Williamson at center in key moments than if it uses him as a traditional power forward.

New Orleans' three traditional centers -- Derrick Favors, Jahlil Okafor and Jaxson Hayes -- do almost all of their damage inside the arc. Favors shot 21% from 3 on a career-high 1.0 attempt per game last season. Hayes, at an extremely early stage of development, is a run-and-jump dunker. Okafor is a ground-and-pound paint scorer.

If Williamson is at the 4, playing him alongside anything but a stretch big could limit him. Of course, Duke was one of the worst-shooting teams in college basketball last year and Williamson still put up historic numbers. He'll still find a way to be productive alongside Favors, Hayes or Okafor, but I'm not sure he'll be top-50-in-the-NBA good.

Playing as a perimeter 4 will put a lot of pressure on Williamson to knock down NBA 3s at a decent clip, which is a major question mark. First-year players have an adjustment to the NBA line, and I'd expect the learning curve for Williamson to be relatively steep, as he has never been a natural shooter, surprising many that he shot even 34% from 3 at Duke.

Playing him next to space-eating centers also takes away a portion of Williamson's best attributes -- his finishing and offensive rebounding. On top of that, the Pels don't have deadeye shooters outside of JJ Redick and Nicolo Melli, with Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram still having to prove themselves from the perimeter and even Jrue Holiday at about 33% over the past two seasons. As much as I'd enjoy Williamson/Hayes 4/5 pick-and-roll combos for lobs, Williamson likely will be much more effective as a finishing, offensive-rebounding, mismatch-driving, small-ball 5 with space to unleash his freakish gifts and playmaking feel.

Given how often coach Alvin Gentry played Julius Randle at center last season (70% of his minutes, according to Cleaning the Glass), it's possible Williamson will see a decent amount of time at that spot, even with the other centers in the fold. Although shorter, Williamson also is a far more useful defender than Randle, as he has shown the ability to switch onto the perimeter, protect the rim and rebound. But that could create extra wear and tear.

In high school, Williamson was on a "pitch count," so to speak, to limit injury risk. The Pelicans definitely will want to be selective with when to unleash Williamson at center and when to preserve his body. At the same time, how much time he is able to spend at center will determine whether he is able to live up to his rookie ranking.

I see Williamson as an all-around-impact player more than a surefire 20-PPG scorer in Year 1. With his strength, physicality, explosiveness and nonstop motor, he'll be a beast on the glass, effective around the rim and a defensive playmaker on the other end. His floor is so high because of how many ways he impacts the game without needing any plays called for him.

Expect fans to fall in love with his relentless energy and on-court personality. While Williamson is an underrated ball handler and passer, I do think it will take some time before he becomes a primary shot-creator in the half court, especially if he is playing on a clogged floor. That day will come, but that's a lot to expect from a rookie who still is developing his shooting touch and offensive game.

Pelton: I agree with pretty much all of that, Mike. Surprisingly, my SCHOENE projection system does have Williamson averaging 17.9 points per game in 32 minutes as a rookie. But I don't think the Pelicans want him to have the pressure of being a go-to scorer right away, and with a quality guard alongside him in Holiday as well as a developing shot-creator in Ingram, he won't need to be.

It's probably also worth mentioning that New Orleans figures to be far more dangerous in transition than in the half-court attack. At either frontcourt spot, Williamson will have a quickness advantage over his opposing number -- and thus far in his NBA career, Ball has also been at his best in the open court. Over the past two seasons, Ball has ranked in the top 10% of NBA point guards as far as increasing his team's transition frequency while on the court, according to Cleaning the Glass. That's ideal for Gentry's up-tempo system.

You mentioned Italian import Melli, and I think how quickly he adjusts to the NBA might help determine how much time Williamson plays at the 5. Melli's translated stats aren't particularly impressive, but we've occasionally seen stretch bigs such as Pero Antic and Maxi Kleber prove more effective in the NBA than their European performance would have indicated. If Melli proves capable of heavy minutes, he is the ideal power forward to put next to Williamson at center.

One concern we haven't gotten into is Williamson's conditioning after he spent most of his spring making the rounds rather than training for the NBA draft. Because of his unique physique, Williamson might be in more danger of getting out of shape than the typical player, as appeared to be the case in Las Vegas. Does that worry you at all?

Schmitz: I'm glad you mentioned his transition value. Not only is Williamson a great target for Ball's lobs and hit-ahead passes, but he also is extremely dangerous pushing off the break against a retreating defense. I've never seen a player that size, aside from maybe Ben Simmons, who can weave through traffic like Williamson with incredible force and momentum while maintaining balance and subtly shifting gears. He isn't a one-trick pony in transition, either, as he showed us in Duke games that he can thread the needle to streaking teammates. I do think rim runs and transition grab-and-gos will be where he finds a lot of success as a rookie.

In terms of his conditioning, I'm not quite as concerned about Williamson getting into shape. With the way the Pelicans play, he'll naturally lean up as much as his body type will allow him, and he has shown us in the past that he is capable of trimming down when it's go time. At McDonald's All American week in Atlanta going into his freshman year, Williamson looked fairly similar to how he did at summer league, and a few months later he was destroying teams in Canada on Duke's foreign tour before ultimately carrying Duke all season. I'm no sports scientist, but he seems like a physical outlier to me.

As far as where I'd rank Williamson, it's tempting to say he absolutely belongs in the top 50, seeing rookies such as Karl-Anthony Towns, Simmons and Luka Doncic all finishing around the top 20 as first-year players. But ultimately, I would say just outside of the top 50 seems more realistic at this point, because I don't expect Williamson to shoulder the same offensive load those three did as rookies and because there will be an adjustment period with his shooting, especially given New Orleans' personnel. I think ultimately Williamson will become an MVP-caliber player, but it won't happen overnight.

Pelton: I'm maybe a tad more optimistic on Williamson's value than you are. Looking at the other players in the 40s, few are go-to scorers. Instead, you see a number of secondary scorers who contribute at both ends. I think Aaron Gordon (No. 45) is a good comparison for a rookie Williamson. Their SCHOENE projections are similar (18.0 PPG, 7.3 RPG for Gordon; 17.9 PPG, 8.0 RPG for Williamson), and I think Williamson can be just as valuable defensively as Gordon.

One way or another, I'm excited to see Williamson try to live up to the hype.