2003 Top 50 List: Not eligible
Dan Collins List: Yes
The guy on our team who is, I think, as good a player as I’ve ever coached, has been Shelden. Shelden is our pillar of strength. He fights for us, he hits big free throws, he makes big buckets, he makes big blocks. We have him down the court when we need to inbound the ball. We have him up there because he’s just so damn good… I love Shelden. There’s no kid I enjoy more. He really doesn’t want anything. He just wants to help everybody. That’s the spirit that helps permeate through our team. He’s been our guy. – Mike Krzyzewski after the 2006 ACC Championship game
Shelden Williams is a player who looks better in retrospect than I thought he was at the time. While I hesitate to say that any player for modern era Duke is underrated, I do think we have to consider that possibility for Williams. There are two things working against him. One, he played at the same time as JJ Redick, so he was never recognized as being the best player on his own team; two, while he was a good offensive player, he was a better defensive player, and defensive-oriented players tend to be underrated. While I don’t mean to diminish Redick’s accomplishments in any way, I think it’s entirely possible that Williams was doing more than Redick to win games for the Blue Devils.
Sports-reference.com calculates a statistic called Win Shares, in which they divvy up a team’s wins to individual players according to their respective contributions. Williams has the most career defensive win shares in the ACC since they began calculating the stat in 1996, and he has the fourth-most win shares in all of NCAA basketball since then (behind David West of Xavier, Nick Fazekas of Nevada, and Shane Battier). By the Win Shares system, Williams, not Redick, was the best player in the ACC in 2004, 2005, and 2006. I’m not necessarily saying you should believe that, or even that I believe it, but I’m offering it as a piece of evidence in Williams’ favor.
Regarding Williams’ defensive value. Since 1987, the NABC has named a college basketball Defensive Player of the Year. Williams won it twice, one of only seven players to do that. In Williams’ last three years, the Blue Devils ranked #3, #2, and #16 nationally in defensive efficiency according to kenpom. Looking at how they did it, they were the best team in the country at defending the three-point line, and it was Williams that allowed them to gamble and pressure on the perimeter, because he was always ready to clean up anything that got past them.
In terms of career numbers, Williams is sixth in career rebounds and fifth in blocked shots. He is ninth in career double-doubles. He ranks in the top five in both career rebounds and blocks in ACC Tournament play and was named first team All-ACC Tournament three times.
While he was not a great offensive player, he was a very good one. Kenpom has him as the third most efficient offensive player in the ACC in 2006, behind Redick and Tyler Hansbrough. That sounds about right.
You could, I suppose, hold it against Williams that the 2005 and 2006 teams, #1 seeds both years, lost in the Sweet 16. But, a) Williams also started on the 2004 Final Four team, so if we’re going to hold 2005 and 2006 against him, we have to give him credit for 2004; b) the Blue Devils got exceptionally tough Sweet 16 draws for a #1 seed in both those years, playing two teams (Michigan State and LSU) who wound up in the Final Four; and c) if you look at those two losses, it was really Redick who had a terrible game each time. In the 2005 loss to Michigan State, Redick went 4-for-14 while Williams had 19 points and 8 rebounds; in the 2006 loss to LSU, Redick went 3-for-18 while Williams had 23 points and 13 rebounds.
ACC teammates who were Consensus First Team All-American in the same season:
- 2019, RJ Barrett and Zion Williamson, Duke
- 2006, JJ Redick and Shelden Williams, Duke
- 2001, Jason Williams and Shane Battier, Duke
- 1984, Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins, UNC
- 1983, Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins, UNC