METAIRIE, La. (AP) — The New Orleans Pelicans are doubling down on injury-plagued, sixth-year pro Zion Williamson, hoping he can be a more reliable and productive centerpiece in the years to come.
If that wasn't clear when the Pelicans (12-41) chose to trade high-scoring wing Brandon Ingram to Toronto — and keep Williamson — before last week's NBA trade deadline, Pelicans basketball operations chief David Griffin left no doubt about it in his first meeting with reporters since the move on Tuesday.
“If you take just his body of work this year, what he’s done for us when he’s been healthy, he’s taking steps every day and he’s grown by leaps and bounds, both on the court and off,” Griffin said. “The player he is now is better than he’s ever been.”
The potential for Williamson's rare combination of raw athletic ability, explosiveness and size (listed at 6-foot-6, 284 pounds) to translate in the NBA has been evident since his first few games on the court back in late January 2020 — after the first of what has become several long injury absences.
This season, Williamson has averaged 23.9 points, 7.3 rebounds and 4.9 assists in 17 games. He's also missed 36 games, primarily because of a hamstring injury.
Key questions surrounding Williamson — who is under contract for three more seasons — have centered on his health, maturity and even his commitment to his profession. At times, he has struggled with his weight and conditioning. During the 2023 offseason, there were unsavory and very public social media posts by a spurned romantic partner. This season, he was suspended one game for being late for a team flight.
Along the way, Williamson, who is slated to suit up against Sacramento on Wednesday night, has missed 243 of 444 regular-season games since being drafted first overall out of Duke in 2019.
“Zion has dealt with a great number of challenges, some of which were sort of his own doing, quite frankly," Griffin said. “And he would tell you that.”
But Griffin expressed confidence that the Williamson of the present and near future — in terms of maturity, reliability and availability — won't resemble the seemingly star-crossed player he has been for most of the past six seasons.
“People mature at different rates in the league, and sometimes that maturity looks like a brushfire and sometimes it looks like a forest fire," Griffin said. "I think he’s reaching forest-fire status now — and that’s exciting.
“From a leadership perspective,” Griffin added, Williamson is “doing things he’s never done before, and he’s much more vocal than he’s ever been. ... He’s embracing the opportunity he has to seize this team."
Griffin also defended the Pelicans' medical team in the face of an unprecedented rash of injuries that have kept all five starters out for extended periods.
"These things that happened in most cases were completely flukish and unavoidable,” Griffin said.
Ingram (ankle) played in just 18 of 51 games before he was traded.
Top defensive player Herb Jones (shoulder) has played in just 20 games this season and Griffin said Tuesday he'll probably be “shut down for the season here soon."
Dejounte Murray, a top offseason acquisition, missed several weeks after breaking his hand in his first game with New Orleans. After he returned, he played just 30 more games before an Achilles tear ended his season.
CJ McCollum, who missed 14 games early this season because of an adductor injury, has looked like a relative pillar of health.
“It’s been almost an unimaginable cascade effect of things that have happened to us this year,” Griffin said, noting that the Pelicans have had 29 different starting lineups.
“We need to get better just in terms of our ability to build a more available roster," Griffin said. “Obviously, that’s something we’ve failed at to this point.”
Griffin said the Pelicans harbored high hopes for Williamson and Ingram as a tandem. But Griffin noted that they played just 34% of their games as Pelicans together during the past five-plus seasons — an untenable trend for the two highest-paid players on the team.
"We reached a point where financially we weren’t going to be able to keep the group together as we were constructed,” Griffin said.
The Ingram trade brought the Pelicans two established veterans in Bruce Brown and Kelly Olynyk, who will be relied upon to help New Orleans' relatively young roster mature professionally.
While Brown's contract is expiring and Olynyk has one more season left on his, Griffin said, “This is not viewed as a short-term situation with either player in our minds.
"We hope, as the season unfolds, they grow to feel the same about us,” Griffin said.
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Brett Martel, The Associated Press
