Willie won't ever reach his potential until he gets away from Joerger. George Karl had him playing the right way his rookie season. He took high percentage shots and was a much better rim protector. Karl let his ball handlers do the ball handling and his unskilled big guys do the finishing.
Joerger shows up and needs a Marc Gasol to run his offense so he plugs WCS into that role. Two years later we get a center who shoots inefficiently and doesn't rim protect very well but dammit he now gets 2 assists a game so the wasted two years has been worth it right?
https://basketball.realgm.com/player/Willie-Cauley-Stein/Summary/24287
Look at WCS's stats when he played in summer league when getting ready to Karl's scheme and getting ready for Joerger's scheme.
After the Karl hiring he scored 11pts, 2.8blk and shot 51% from the field in SL.
Joerger gets hired the next year and WCS is inexplicably now playing at the high post in summer league and failing miserably.
7pts, .75blk and shot 26% from the field in SL.
Yeah yeah I know, summer league and small sample size. But remember how poorly WCS started that year? It took Ty Lawson spoon feeding him bucket after bucket to pull his sophomore season out of the grave. He was absolutely useless in the role Joerger had him in until Lawson turned him into a finisher instead of the job of creator that he had for the first month or two. I get on to Willie a lot for his lackadaisical soft play but he has been horribly mismanaged for the last 2 years here.