ESPN’s LAZY Zion Williamson Trade Rumor Debunked | New Orleans Pelicans Update

ESPN’s LAZY Zion Williamson Trade Rumor Debunked | New Orleans Pelicans Update

ESPN just put out the dumbest, laziest Zion Williamson trade rumor I’ve ever seen. And I’m telling you right now, it makes zero sense. Let’s shut this one down immediately. It’s the Wednesday episode of Locked On Pelicans. Let’s go. [Music] You are Locked On Pelicans, your daily New Orleans Pelicans podcast, part of the Locked On Network. your team every day. Welcome to another edition of Locked On Pelicans, the daily podcast covering your favorite team, the New Orleans Pelicans and NBA, part of the Locked On Network. Your team every day, available wherever you get your podcast and available on YouTube. I’m your host, Pelicans Insider, credential member of the media, JakeMadison, Nola Jake on Twitter. Here with y’all on this Wednesday. And oh boy, we’re we’re going to see where this show goes. And I’m going to try my best not to get in trouble, but ESPN has put out, as I said in the open, the dumbest, the laziest Zion Williamson take trade rumor that I have seen. We are going to shut it down over the course of the whole show right now. So today’s episode of Locked On Pelicans is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control over your finances with Monarch Money. Use code locked on monarchoney.com for 50% off your first year. And of course, thank you for making Locked On Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We are here Monday through Friday. The number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everyday. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Locked On Pelicans podcast. And don’t forget, you can also watch the Lockdown Pelicans podcast on the GF Coast Sports and Entertainment Network every weekday at 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. By the way, if you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below on YouTube. So, let’s get into it. ESPN has a summer forecast panel made up of their NBA insiders. There’s 25 people. I don’t exactly know who is on the panel, but yo. All right, that’s so that’s the background on it. In the survey, the most recent one, it’s kind of going over some things. One of the questions was the next superstar to request a trade will be, and we’re going to go five to one, Trey Young with one vote, John Morant with one vote, LeBron James with six votes, Giannis with seven votes, and then winning this category, Zion Williamson with 10 votes. So, I’m going to read you what they said here, and then let’s just destroy this quote. There isn’t a situation simmering this summer that seems as destined for mid-season divorce as Jimmy Butler’s strange ma strained marriage with Miami he was last season. Williamson’s stay in New Orleans might have been extended by the Pelicans front office change with Joe Dumar’s replacing David Griffin as the primary decision maker. If Williamson can have a strong start to the season and avoid the injury bug that has plagued his career, it’s feasible he could seek a fresh start instead of remaining with a New Orleans franchise that seems stuck in neutral. It has been radio silent since James via his agent Rich Paul attempted to rattle the Lakers cages immediately after exercising his 52.6 million player option for this season. The all-time leading scorer in his camp understand just how complicated a trade involving him at this age making that much money with a contractual right to veto any deal would be. Speculation is swirled around Giannis asking out of Milwaukee for several years. If he didn’t take that that drastic step this summer, it’s unlikely to happen mid-season. End quote. You know that gif gif gif of I think it’s from the clue movie like the flames coming out the side of my face. That’s what happened to me here. I was literally doing that. Someone can Photoshop it in if you want. Right on the surface you might shrug and think, okay, you know, small market, big name, injury history, sure, but let’s actually stack Zion Williamson up against some of the other names who didn’t top the list. We’re just going to look at these five players because when you look at it, the logic falls apart immediately. Let’s start with Giannis, who is number two here. Just recently, ESPN themselves spent most of the off season reporting that Giannis was keeping the door open on his future in Milwaukee. You know, basically him telling the world, “Hey, I might leave if it isn’t right.” But he’s not number one on ESPN’s own list after they spent how much time, how much airtime, written words, tweets, all of it about Giannis and his future. What? LeBron James. Every year we get a cycle of is this his final season in LA? Right? There’s always smoke around LeBron James. You know, some of that comes from his own camp. his agent, Rich Paul, put out a number of weird statements that that ESPN quote directly references this off seasonason, right? ESPN has reported extensively on this. And yet, again, LeBron’s not at the top. John Morant, look, between the suspensions, the uncertainty, and Memphis’s weird in between state, John has every reason to be frustrated if if things don’t turn around. This feels much more volatile than Zion’s situation in New Orleans right now. mainly because John Mar has been healthy and played and led them to a bunch of good things and they actually made their team significantly worse in sake of future flexibility. Then Trey Young, we’ve heard for years now about Trey Young’s future in Atlanta. The the Hawks have retoled around him a couple of times, right? And he wants a Max. Do they want to give him a max extension? All of that, right? So, despite all of the things we just said, somehow ESPN’s 25 NBA experts land on Zion Williamson as the most likely to ask out right after right after Joe Dumar said on air that he directly asked Zion Williamson if he wanted to be here or not and Zion said yes and that he sees this at home, right? Like just put him there’s another way this all falls apart. We’re going to talk about it in the next segment because that might be the bigger point, but just putting him against the four other names right there. Zion isn’t gonna top that list. Shouldn’t top that list. This is just This is not analysis. This is lazy. This is people outside of New Orleans falling back on the easy narrative. Small market star player. Therefore, he must eventually leave. That is partially what they are doing here. This is one of the laziest, dumbest things. This creates rumors that get to fans. This stuff does matter. It shows you, you know, how far those perception, we’ll talk more about that in the third segment here, lags behind reality. ESPN has reported, it self-reported on stars like Giannis and LeBron maybe leaving their current teams. And yet, it’s Zion still getting put at the top of this list. This is not grounded in fact whatsoever. Right? This is a stereotype. Small market, star player, must leave. The logic just falls apart immediately looking at the list and looking at some of these players on who might request a trade. Who has leverage to request a trade? That’s part of it, too. LeBron does. Giannis does. John Mar probably does. Trey Young probably does too, right? Like, look at all those names. They have more leverage to request a trade than Zion Williamson does. And we’ll touch on that in the next segment because there’s a bigger part to this that is just one makes it so freaking dumb to me. You can hear it in my voice. the like annoyance that I’ve got here. I need to stop, catch my breath. Like I just read this and it’s like what what are we even doing? Right? You just ESPN just spent all summer talking about Giannis. The year before that, guess what? They talked about Giannis, too. They’ve talked about Giannis literally every single year. Now, while I don’t think he’s going to request a trade, I think he’s much more likely than Zion Williamson, who just came is finishing off a season of playing 30 games. What are we doing here? This is ESPN being lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy. That statement, which we’re going to really dissect in the next one, William, William Williamson stay in New Orleans, might have been extended by the Pelicans front office change with Joe Dumar’s replacing David Griffin as the primary decision maker. If Williamson can have a strong start to the season and avoid the injury bug that has plagued his career, it’s feasible that he could seek a fresh start instead of remaining with a New Orleans franchise that seems stuck in neutral. There’s nothing declarative in there, right? to give him 10 of 25 votes. Just dumb, lazy. This was one of the, like I said, dumbest, laziest takes rumors that you want to put out there. And this stuff does matter. It impacts the fan base. We’ll talk more about that a little bit later in the show. But I want to get into what makes zero sense about this. I got some things to say that’s coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked on Pelicans. Today’s episode of Locked on Pelicans is brought to you by Monarch Money. Most people can’t name all their financial accounts or even what’s in those accounts. So whether it’s 401ks, property, investments, and when you don’t have the full picture, you can end up leaving money on the table. 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So don’t let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code locked on MBA at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That’s 50% off your first year at monarchmoney.com. code locked on NBA and thank you for making Locked on Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We are here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So, please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everyday. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Lockdown Pelicans podcast. And if you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Lockdown Pelicans fan poll survey. I’m going to close it. Um, we got a ton of responses. We’re going to use that all next week on the show here. So, I’m looking forward to breaking that down with you. But, I got another survey. Lockdown wants to hear from you. We’ve put together a survey to learn more about our listeners and make your favorite podcast even better. So, this is your chance to tell us what you like, what you don’t, and answer questions about our advertising. Go to lockdownpodcast.com/servey to get started. And everyone who completes a survey will be entered for a chance to win one of 10 $100 Amazon gift cards. Again, that’s lockdownpodcast.com/servey. You can also find the link in the show notes. And we appreciate y’all helping us out. So, let’s keep talking about the rumor that makes no sense, take that makes no sense of Zion Williamson. According to ESPN’s, I’m going to put experts in quotes right now. The next superstar to request a trade will be Zion Williamson. compared to the other names on the list. Like that’s number one. There’s just so many leaps in logic here. So, let’s explain why the rumor also makes no sense. Aside from the fact that Joe Dumar literally just said on the record that he asked Zion if he wanted to be in New Orleans and Zion said yes, which should shut this whole thing down already, right? Like ESPN’s logic falls apart there. But maybe the survey was done before that all came out. Okay, I’m going to read the quote. again here. Williamson’s stay in New Orleans might have been extended by the Pelicans front office change with Joe Jars replacing David Griffin as the primary decision maker. If Williamson can have a strong start to the season and avoid the injury bug that has plagued his career, it’s feasible he could seek a fresh start instead of remaining with a New Orleans franchise that seems stuck in neutral. End quote. So the logic here is he gets healthy then wants out. Huh? The team is stuck in neutral because Zion Williamson isn’t ever healthy. It’s not like, look, with Anthony Davis, he did himself no favors, but the team certainly failed in terms of building around him, but for the most part, he was playing, you know, questionable to return, missed a lot of second halfs and things like that, but he was playing. He wasn’t playing 30 games a season. He wasn’t missing a whole season, right? He wasn’t playing 29 games, whatever it is with Zion Williamson. the team is stuck in neutral because Zion gets injured. You know, if he’s actually healthy, guess what? They tend to be good. 49 wins a season ago when he was basically at his healthiest, right? This logic and reasoning behind with by ESPN makes no sense to me at all. But then here’s the bigger thing that I want to get into. If you’re Zion, put yourself in Zion shoes for a minute, right? I somewhat get the idea of letting you, Zion, prove that he’s healthy and then creating a demand for him, thus increasing the likelihood that a team will trade for him, right? Especially if there isn’t much of a market currently. There’s some maybe small logic there. I think that applies more to the Pelicans wanting to move him and trade him rather than Zion requesting a trade. But here’s the thing with it, right? If Zion stays healthy, I’m like reading off of my notes. If Zion stays healthy and plays well, then another team is going to have to give up more to get him. His value is rising. His value is higher. If you’re a star player that wants to be traded, you want to fetch as little as possible in return. You don’t want your new team to give up everything for you to gut their roster and now you go to a depleted team that also doesn’t have future draft picks because they were included in the deal. You know, if Zion wants a fresh start, him tanking his value is probably the smartest thing that he could do. And if that’s the case, after just playing 30 games a year ago where there doesn’t seem like there was much of a market for him, he should have requested a trade already. He should have requested a trade by now. They would have moved him. The new team that he’s going to wouldn’t have given much up and thus they can improve the team again around him in the future. But now if he goes and plays right, that’s that’s what ESPN’s logic here is. You know, if Williamson can have a strong start to the season and avoid the injury bug that has plagued his career, it’s feasible he could seek a fresh start elsewhere. Yeah. On a team that’s going to have crap assets at that point and not have a ton of picks because Zion is looking like an MVP candidate or an AllNBA guy to start the year. You don’t want that. Zion doesn’t want that. Go to a depleted team that doesn’t do that can’t do anything, right? You know, look at Kevin Durant going to the Phoenix Suns decimated their depth and all future first round picks in a deal to like make that team better and it never worked out there. You see this regularly happening when players go to a new team by forcing a trade and that team gives up so much to try and get that guy. It doesn’t lead to a lot of good things for the most part here. So, if Zion is healthy and a good team has to gut the roster to get him, then you go to the new team. They suck and don’t have ways to improve. This is ESPN is basically saying like Zion might want that. Zion don’t want that. Like, no way. And look, if that’s Zion’s plan, good luck, buddy. Good luck. Right? Anthony Davis created a literal toxic work environment to get himself traded mid-season and it didn’t happen. He did everything he could during the season to lower his trade value to create all the leverage on his side to force a move and it didn’t happen. That’s not going to happen this time around either. Right? But all that is besides the point because as we just said, this logic makes zero sense behind all of it. Right? There there’s nothing to this. This goes back to what I said in the first segment of this is almost like a stereotype that ESPN is doing. This is not analysis. That that paragraph, that’s all the logic there is to it. I’ve read it multiple times. I don’t need to say it again here. Right. None of that makes any sense at all. Now, look, I don’t necess, you know, if Joe Jumar goes to Zion Williamson and goes to every player on the team and is like, “Do you want to be here?” They’re they’re all going to say yes. They’re all going to say yes, even if they want a trade or something like that, you know, unless they’re formally requesting one. But if it’s like, “Do you want to be here or not?” They’re all going to say yes. If your boss comes to you at your current job and says, “Do you want to be here?” You’re going to say yes. Even if you’re actively applying elsewhere, like that’s what you’re going to do. There’s, you know, it’s not exactly the same thing. We, you know, they don’t live in the same world that we do, but there is something to that, right? So, of course, Zion is going to say yes. Of course, Jordan P when you’re trading for him is going to say like, “I want to be there.” You know, same for every player on the roster that Joe Dumar’s asked. So, I’m not going to buy too much into that of like Zion clearly wants to be here. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. But regardless of that, this logic behind it, have fun on your bad next team if that’s the case, right? The best chance for him winning might be here right now, given that if he’s going to increase his trade value where teams want to go and get him. And look, there wasn’t a ton of that this off season, then okay, like enjoy a gutted team kind of thing. But beyond that, the team has shown they don’t want to trade him, right? Like at all. They don’t want to trade him. They would have done it by now. They basically could have waved him and it would have only cost them $8 million against the salary cap this year. You go into this year just kind of as a rebuild. That’s a small price to pay for getting off the rest of his salary or whatever. You could have traded him. Teams would have given you something. There was one or two desperate teams that would make that kind of move. I don’t doubt it. Right. Going back to our mock draft, I was looking to trade him and just try and kind of see what you could get and struck a deal. So, all of that is to say like they they can move him, but if he’s saying I want to stay, which again we’ll give a grain of salt with that, but the team is saying we don’t want to trade you. Simple as that. And if if Anthony Davis couldn’t get traded mid-season by like creating a just mess of a situation, then Zion’s not going to be able to do that either. And there’s no leverage here for that sort of thing. And if he does, then it just means the Pelgans are going to get a better return than they would have gotten otherwise. So, it’s all not that bad. But again, if you look at it with those other four players on the list, Giannis, LeBron, John Morant, Trey Young, of who’s going to request a trade, Trey Young would request a trade because they’re not going to give him a max. Okay, that makes way more sense. John Morant, that team got worse. LeBron James literally had his agent putting out statements. Maybe he doesn’t want to be here. Giannis, ESPN has reported on this. So how they they give 10 votes to Zion, seven to Giannis, six to LeBron, one to Jaw, one to Trey is mind-blowing to me. Just again unbelievably lazy. So let’s get into what ESPN is like really doing here because there is a selfish component to this by the experts that voted on this. I’ll explain that’s coming up here next in today’s episode of Locked on Pelicans. And thank you for making Locked on Pelicans your first listen today and every day. We are here Monday through Friday, the number one Pelicans podcast covering everything you want to know about this Pelicans team. So please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and join over 11,000 Pelicans fans on YouTube as well. And become an everydayer. That means you listen Monday through Friday to the Lockdown Pelicans podcast. And if you’re an everydayer, let me know in the comments down below. And don’t forget, you can watch Locked On Pelicans on the Gulf Coast Sports and Entertainment Network at 10:30 a.m. every weekday along with 5:30 PM along with Locked On Saints, Locked On LSU, Locked On SEC. Make one of those three shows your second listen today. Maybe Locked On Saints with Spencer Rattler being named QB1. Ross is going to break it all down for you over at the Locked On Saints podcast. By the way, for college football fans, another big moment for Locked On. Locked on and Fire TV presents college football kickoff. Your ultimate college football weekly preview. Drake Tol of Locked on Big 12 leads the conversation along two-time AP coach of the year Gary Patterson, former college star Jesse Holly, and Locked On’s local experts, a college football preview. Only Locked On can do. Catch college football kickoff every Thursday throughout the season only on Fire TV. So, let’s start wrapping up talking about this ESPN rumor or take, whatever you want to call it, right? Just just garbage. Garbage in my opinion. So, what’s ESPN really doing here? What’s the real angle? None of this none of this is actually about Zion Williamson wanting out. None of this. This is all about outsiders not believing in the Pelicans, right? And I don’t mean not believing in the Pelicans in the way that like they didn’t like the Derek Queen trade. They don’t think the team’s going to be good. It it goes beyond that, right? Look, two national TV games this year. This team is still treated like an afterthought. So, you know, the national media aren’t watching night in night out. So, what they do, they’re not paying much attention to the team even in the off season. So, what they do is they default to old and tired narratives. And I do think a lot of this is about piling on after not liking the Derek Queen trade. Look, I wouldn’t have made that move if I was in charge of the team. But to see people saying it’s the worst trade ever just months after the Luca Donic to the Lakers trade, which literally might be the worst trade ever, is just an absurdly ridiculous thing to say. This survey is more about people wanting to justify their punditry, justify their takes rather than looking at it properly. Right? the the logic falls apart immediately when it comes to this. It falls apart immediately. It didn’t take long for us to look at that and be like, “This makes no sense at all.” Now, I don’t want to just blame the media here. Truthfully, the team and Zion have put themselves in this situation. They have failed to control the narrative around the franchise. Zion has failed to control the narrative around himself when he misses time. Like, he doesn’t talk to the media. We we’ve asked, right? like he does not want to talk particularly when he’s injured or when things are going on. It’s what happens, right? You know, I I can tell you there’s been some frustration from the Pelicans themselves about like we want Zion to talk, control the narrative. It doesn’t. So then people run with things, right? And Zion has done a bad job about that. It’s not hard for him to do an interview and be like, I really want to be here. I love it here. Just do that. Pay lip service. It’s not hard. You could do it in a controlled team friendly environment with their own people as well, right? So, the team has failed to control the narrative. Zion Williamson has failed to control the narrative. And then they also haven’t won, which is how you eliminate the majority of this stuff. And look, yes, this stuff does matter because it wears on the fan base. you locked on Pelicans listener, I hope you’re an everydayer, you know, have heard this every single off season from literally the moment the Pelicans got the number one overall pick in what was it, 2018, right? Then it was, “Oh, Zion’s not smiling. He was hoping to go to the Knicks.” It was immediate. Immediate. You’re tired of this. I’m tired of this. I want to do this show, like this specific show about this, because this is dumb, right? But we’ve got to come in and shut some of this stuff down. This wears on the fan base. The everydayers and even the people who are only listen part-time, which is also totally fine, have heard me talk a lot about the team needing to change their perception, right? They need to make that a focus. Otherwise, you get total crap like this being written. And to do that, it’s going to start with health and winning. Those two things will completely shift the narrative. That’s what this team needs more than anything else. Now, I, you know, I don’t want to blame the team or Zion for this this stuff being written over at ESPN for, you know, their their experts kind of making these takes, putting these rumors out there. So, you know, that’s on them. It’s, you know, you could have voted Giannis one, you could have voted LeBron one, it could have been really any other player that makes far far more sense than one who just played 30 games, right? Like maybe if Zion had more leverage or, you know, had kind of had a ton written about how maybe he’s unhappy here in New Orleans, like doesn’t like Joe Demar when look, by all accounts, it seems like they’ve been connecting, right? This is, like I said, it’s just unbelievably lazy in my opinion. and annoying. I, you know, I don’t know. I’m kind of at a loss for words with this one. I’ve said, you know, I think I’ve said lazy probably more than any other word in this in this show here, but it’s true. Dumb as well. The logic just completely falls apart. They could have given good reasons for it, but they didn’t. They could have looked at their own reporting and used that as a basis to make their decisions in this survey, but they didn’t. This just reeks of laziness of stereotypes and I I don’t want to say a bias against the Pelicans because I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think they’re biased against like any team where it’s like, “Oh, they hate the New Orleans Pelicans, so they’re going to say stuff like this cuz truthfully, that doesn’t make much sense either.” But it just speaks to people who just don’t follow the team, don’t know what’s going on around the franchise whatsoever. This is why you tune into places like Locked On, right? Like that’s what the power of the Locked On is so important for. When we do national shows, one of which I co-host, right? you get the local takes on all of that. There you go. That’s gonna What do you think about this in the com? Let me know in the comments down below. That’s going to do it for this episode of Lockdown Pelicans. We are part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Be back with y’all tomorrow.

Is Zion Williamson’s future with the New Orleans Pelicans in jeopardy? A recent ESPN report suggests the NBA superstar might be the next to request a trade, but not everyone agrees.

Jake Madison, Pelicans insider and credentialed media member, passionately dissects this controversial speculation. He breaks down why the rumor doesn’t add up, comparing Zion’s situation to other NBA stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo and LeBron James. Madison also analyzes the complexities of trade requests, player motivations, and how this impacts the Pelicans fanbase.

Tune in for an in-depth critique of ESPN’s reporting and a fresh perspective on Zion’s future in New Orleans.

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