Let’s play the “Guess That Player” game.

Player A (per game): 23.6 points, 2.5 rebounds, 5.2 assists, 60.9 true shooting percentage

Player B: 24.5 points, 3.8 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 59.2 true shooting percentage

As you probably deduced from this article’s title, one of them—Player A, for the record­—is Lou Williams.  The other?

Kyrie Irving.

Sweet Lou has resuscitated the ailing, limping Los Angeles Clippers, dragging them back into the top half of the Western Conference  with timely scoring explosions and badly needed playmaking. You most likely, once again, already knew that much. But did you know he’s having the same damn season as Uncle Drew—a veritable superstar and fringe MVP candidate?

Fans and pundits have always unfairly typecasted Williams as a streaky chucker who can buoy a second unit. Yes, he’s a shot-happy scoring guard. And yes, he’s rail-thin and can’t play a lick of defense. But Lou Will isn’t Jamal Crawford Redux. He gets to the line almost on command, pours in points efficiently and turns the ball over sparingly.

Call him a “chucker” if you want, but as with Irving, it doesn’t really matter as long as the shots he’s jacking up go in.

Williams scores in innumerable ways. He’s just as comfortable whipping out crossovers in isolation as he is canning triples from the corner. But thanks to Synergy and the NBA dumping a vat of data at our feet in recent years, we now know what really sets him apart: He was born to run pick-and-rolls.

Sweet Lou has navigated screens more effectively than nearly anyone in the NBA. Over the last two seasons, he’s ranked in the league’s 95^th and 81^st percentiles, respectively, of efficiency as a pick-and-roll ball-handler. He’s in the 86^th percentile again this year, but the Clippers’ near-infinite injury list has him assuming an even larger role. He’s punking fools in the pick-and-roll on 9.5 possessions per game, nearly double the volume he took on last season:

Screens are the great equalizer at any level of basketball. They allow a scrawny 6’1” guard like Williams to beat multiple opponents and crack the paint without having to break them down one by one. They’ll maintain Chris Paul’s point guard divinity deep into his 30s. They make the Golden Warriors unstoppable.

Every premier ball-handler approaches the pick-and-roll game in a unique way, though. Paul is a specialist at snaking around the screener patiently to launch pull-ups from the nail or unlock passing lanes. Lou Will, too, has some signature moves, and he unleashes them all with the following goals in mind: Score, score, score.

ICE in His Veins

The standard coverage against side pick-and-rolls is the ICE. The on-ball defender will angle his man to the sideline, which acts as a kind of third defender, while the screener’s man sags slightly to defend the baseline drive.

Lou Will is an expert at using the ICE to his own advantage. Instead of ambling toward the baseline, he often uses a jab-step toward the middle, exactly where the defender doesn’t want him to go. That feint gives him an extra sliver of room to hoist jumpers:

In the above clip, he creates an open jumper for himself with one simple movement. He knows Kevin Durant will jump middle in a panic to preserve the integrity of the ICE coverage. Williams doesn’t even use the screen. He merely uses the threat of it to get a clean look versus a 7-foot pterodactyl.

History repeats itself in this clip:

Notice how Lou Will saunters into his shot before Ben Simmons, another large human capable of affecting jumpers, even gets screened. He knows immediately that the jab step was all he needed. It usually is.

But Williams isn’t one-dimensional. Take away the pull-up to his left and he’ll zoom toward the middle—a death knell for any defense using the ICE:

Pace > Speed

Williams isn’t a livewire athlete. He’s not slow or ground-bound by any means, but he’s not Russell Westbrook, either. Instead, he uses his understanding of pace to use defenders’ positioning against them. It’s an especially useful tactic when he goes to his right, where he’s less comfortable as a shooter:

Most spry ball-handlers would notice the big man on their hip and mosey back to the perimeter to exploit the mismatch. Not Williams. He slows down and pretends to consider that option, and as soon as Ekpe Udoh’s hands drop—a telltale sign he’s about to move vertically instead of horizontally—he accelerates to the hoop:

This time, Lou Will’s in a hurry, but he’s moving just slowly enough to threaten a smooth crossover to his left—his preferred destination. Cheick Diallo knows this, so he can’t fully commit to taking away the sideline. When he finally does, he’s too late and too high up. Williams holds down the right trigger and leaves the poor rookie in the dust.

DeAndre Jordan makes everything a bit easier, of course. Here, Williams uses a wicked hesitation dribble, and Nene immediately retreats to Jordan, ceding an easy lay-in on what started as a sluggish drive:

Serving Up Banana Splits

This is some truly evil stuff. Williams isn’t like Kyrie Irving. He doesn’t use an encyclopedia’s worth of ornate dribble moves to befuddle defenders.

His handle, though, is so tight you simply cannot steal the ball. He keeps the rock below the knees of big men, let alone their hands:

Read a scouting report of any college guard and you’re bound to see something like “will need to become more patient in the pick-and-roll at the next level.” But patience only gets you so far. Plenty of young guards learn how to loop around the pick and reach the foul line, but they’re often clueless once they get there.

Rather than waiting on the screen, reading the defense and then driving, Lou Will attacks at the point. Excluding the pair of hesitation dribbles—a mainstay in any scoring guard’s arsenal—it takes him just one motion to create an open look or an easy layup in all of the clips above. Williams is a penny-pincher in terms of economy of movement. He doesn’t dilly-dally; he gets where he needs to go, and he’s lethal once he’s there.

In taking on more volume this season while maintaining elite efficiency, Lou Will hasn’t just established himself as the Sixth Man of the Year shoo-in; he’s become a star-level offensive player. Based on reputation and career trajectory alone, he would’ve been a bizarre All-Star pick. But he’s been more valuable to his team this season than half the guys who actually made Teams LeBron and Team Steph.

The Lou Will pick-and-roll has been the Clippers’ lifeline, and the team’s front office must value him as the featured scorer he is when rivals come calling for his juicy expiring contract—and his elite pick-and-roll play.  And you better believe they’ll come, harder now more than ever, following the Blake Griffin-to-Detroit superbuster.

Coaches and trainers try their best to distill the pick-and-roll into a science, but at the elite level, it becomes more of an art. By-the-book ball-handlers read defenses and determine their next move through a series of milliseconds-long calculations. But the very best play purely off instinct, manipulating defenders instead of letting the defenders manipulate them.

Lou Williams falls in the latter category. He’s a pick-and-roll artist.

And this season, he’s painting his magnum opus.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from NBA Math, Basketball Reference or NBA.com and are accurate heading into games on January 28.