Derrick Williams played with a broken pinky

Derrick Williams had a sensational season.

The guy that couldn't crack anyone's top 100 recruiting lists averaged 19.5 ppg and 8.3 rpg while shooting 56.8% from three point land as a power forward. He had a number of absolutely dominating performances down the stretch of the season, including the 26 points, 11 boards, and game-winning block he had against Washington and the 32 points and 13 boards he put Duke in Arizona's blowout Sweet 16 win.

Most impressive?


He did all of that despite having his right hand -- his shooting hand -- strongly resemble a club for the last two months of the season. What had been reported was that Williams sprained his pinky, which is why he wore such a heavy wrap on his hand.

It turns out that Williams did a bit more that just "sprain" his pinky. He broke his finger. How close did he come to having his season ended?

"If I cracked it a half inch lower, I would have had to have surgery," Williams told reporters on Wednesday. "If I had to sit out, I would sit out, but I wasn't going to sit out if there was no reason. I just wanted to continue to play with my teammates for as long as I could."

"I told Coach I was going to play no matter what. I wasn't going to sit out. Obviously, there was a risk to that if I broke it again or made it worse. But I just wanted to go out there with my teammates and win as many games as possible."

Now not only has Williams shown a tremendous amount of improvement over the last two seasons, he dominated the second half of this season playing with just three fingers on his shooting hand. And he still managed to throw down poster dunk after poster dunk and knock down 42-74 threes on the year.

That has to be something that makes the NBA front office types salivate even more.