The Pelicans have issued an update on forward Zion Williamson, who left the NBA’s Disney World campus last week to attend to an urgent family matter. While the Pelicans say that Williamson “fully intends” to rejoin the team, there’s still no timetable for his return to the campus, per today’s announcement.
Williamson has been getting tested for the coronavirus on a daily basis while he has been away from the club and continues to return negative results, according to the club. That’s good news for the Pelicans. Based on the NBA’s protocols, that means the star rookie should be quarantined for as few as four days once he eventually reports back to Disney.
Given Williamson’s ongoing absence, it seems increasingly unlikely that he’ll participate in any of the Pelicans’ exhibition scrimmages within the next week. New Orleans’ regular season schedule will resume on July 30 when the team faces Utah in the first official game on the NBA’s summer calendar. It remains to be seen whether 2019’s first overall pick will be available for that contest.
Williamson has averaged 23.6 PPG, 6.8 RPG, and 2.2 APG in 19 games (29.7 MPG) in his first NBA season, and figures to play a key part in the Pelicans’ quest to secure a playoff spot in the West. New Orleans is currently 3.5 games back of the Grizzlies and can force a play-in tournament by remaining within four games of Memphis while finishing ahead of Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Phoenix.
Thought he was hurt again
Call the networks on the red phone because all we care about is seeng more ZW. /s
Sarcasm aside, there are probably millions of viewers out there who actually do care about seeing more Zion. If the season hadn’t been put on hold in March, he would have been a slam dunk to beat out Ja Morant for rookie of the year honors. Assuming Zion can stay relatively healthy for the rest of his career, I think it’s fair to assume he will be a far better player than Morant, and he’s on a much better team too.
I refer to how this would be a 16-team restart except the league wanted to be sure to have ZW on the TV sced to make them money. Possibly the immediacy of the urge was because ZW may not last that long, as he has demonstrated by his short seasons. ZW will struggle to have better career numbers than the also-explosive Brandon Clark!
Seriously?!?!?
Come on dude! Show me proof were the league is admitting to have 22 teams only for Zion…
Brandon Clark is very good, IMO this year much better than Morant, as he had a similar value but playing a lot less every game… But he will never ever be anything similar to Zion, much less better.
I must agree with harden-westbrook-mvps in this one, Zion should have been the ROY if season finished normally, Zion will be healthy for his career & he will be a far better player than Morant & in a better team.
You see when h-w-mvps don’t talk HOU he does talk some sense sometimes!