{"id":552381,"date":"2026-01-22T03:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/552381\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T03:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:53:14","slug":"zion-williamson-not-returning-to-pistons-game-amid-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/552381\/","title":{"rendered":"Zion Williamson not returning to Pistons game amid illness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nba\/new-orleans-pelicans\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Orleans Pelicans<\/a> star forward <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nba\/players\/adc009ff\/zion-williamson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Zion Williamson<\/a> ultimately couldn&#8217;t finish Wednesday night&#8217;s game against the visiting Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n<p>The Pelicans have announced that the former Duke Blue Devils star is <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PelicansNBA\/status\/2014167413344928090\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">done for the rest of the evening<\/a> because of an illness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cZion Williamson (illness) will not return to tonight\u2019s game vs. Detroit,\u201d New Orleans shared via a social media post on X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>Before he exited the game, the 25-year-old Williamson scored just four points on 2-for-5 shooting with four rebounds and a turnover in only 15 minutes of action.<\/p>\n<p>The former No. 1 overall NBA draft pick was <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nba\/new-orleans-pelicans\/pelicans-news-zion-williamson-injury-report-pistons\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">questionable prior to the Pistons game<\/a> at Smoothie King Center in New Orleans due to the same illness, but he was still able to give it a go. Unfortunately, it appeared that he couldn&#8217;t continue playing, as he played just a little over half of his average playing time in the 2025-26 NBA season.<\/p>\n<p>Williamson entered Wednesday averaging 22.5 points on a 58.5 percent shooting from the field, 5.8 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 29.3 minutes per outing.<\/p>\n<p>As for the game, the Pels ended up suffering a 112-104 loss to the East-leading Pistons.<\/p>\n<p>Saddiq Bey paced New Orleans with 20 points on 4-for-12 shooting from the floor and 11-for-11 from the free-throw line, while Trey Murphy III added 17 points on 6-for-9 shooting. Jalen Duren put up a double-double of 20 points and 15 boards for Detroit, which improved to 31-10.<\/p>\n<p>The Pelicans, who dropped to 10-35 amid <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nba\/new-orleans-pelicans\/pelicans-cannot-completely-rebuild-around-trey-murphy-iii\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">yet another brutal season<\/a>, will next face the Memphis Grizzlies on the road on Friday, hopefully with Williamson healthy and available to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Orleans Pelicans star forward Zion Williamson ultimately couldn&#8217;t finish Wednesday night&#8217;s game against the visiting Detroit Pistons.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,6,14502,470,297,814],"class_list":{"0":"post-552381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-pistons","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-pistons","11":"tag-detroitpistons","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nba-injury","14":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","15":"tag-pistons","16":"tag-zion-williamson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115936729741754162","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}