Draft your Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team for the 2026 MLB Season<\/a><\/p>\nTo this point, according to a source close to Williamson, neither Williamson nor anyone in his camp has been given any indication that his time in New Orleans is nearing an end (both Dumars and Weaver declined interview requests). And yet, the awkward fit with Queen, combined with how deeply Dumars and Weaver are now invested in his success \u2014 the 2026 pick the Pelicans owe Atlanta as part of the Queen trade currently has a 32% chance of landing in the top four of a draft that scouts say features a loaded class \u2014 has many executives around the league assuming that Williamson, who is extension-eligible this offseason, will soon be on the market.<\/p>\n
Williamson is aware of the situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Orleans is home for me. It\u2019s where I want to be,\u201d he said in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports when asked whether he thinks his time with the Pelicans is winding down. \u201cBut at the end of the day, if we’re going to be realistic about it, the NBA is a business. I could be traded in the offseason, or I could be traded before [next season\u2019s] trade deadline.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cNot that I want that to happen,\u201d he added. \u201cBut that\u2019s just the realism of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question then becomes: Should the prospect of adding Williamson excite other teams?<\/p>\n
On the one hand, you have a not-yet-26-year-old former No. 1 pick and two-time All-Star coming off a healthy season in which he ranks among the league\u2019s most efficient isolation scorers. That\u2019s not the profile of a player who typically hits the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s on another level in terms of his drives,\u201d New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown said recently. \u201cIt takes all five guys being in the right position to try to make it tough on him, and you still may not even be able to make it tough on him. He’s that powerful, athletic, strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
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On the other hand, Williamson remains a non-rebounding poor defender who has eclipsed the 30-games-played mark just three times in his seven-year career and whose usage and assist numbers have both dipped this season. Combine that with his injury history and contract \u2014 which guarantees him $42.2 million next season and, if he hits certain incentive markers, possibly $45 million the year after \u2014 and, in the eyes of some, he becomes too risky a proposition in the NBA\u2019s apron era.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now he\u2019s a borderline All-Star who makes a lot of money,\u201d said a Western Conference executive. \u201cThat\u2019s the sort of player a lot of teams are now avoiding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peek beneath the hood, though, and there are reasons to believe Williamson could rediscover his All-NBA form.<\/p>\n
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For one, the dip in some of his numbers may simply be a function of how the Pelicans have deployed him this season. \u201cWe\u2019ve used Zion in more off-ball actions than he\u2019s ever been a part of before,\u201d Borrego said. \u201cWe\u2019ve tried moving him around a bit to make it harder for defenses to load up on him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williamson may be running fewer pick-and-rolls and posting up less frequently, but you can see the upside of Borrego\u2019s decision in other metrics. Williamson is turning the ball over at a career-low rate. His efficiency from the floor is back at his prime-Zion levels. And his drives? \u201cSome of his takes to the rim are unguardable,\u201d was how an executive who recently watched Williamson described him.<\/p>\n
None of that would matter, though, if Williamson weren\u2019t able to remain on the floor. And it\u2019s here where opinions once again diverge. Most of the executives and coaches Yahoo Sports spoke to outside of the Pelicans organization remained dubious. Some attribute his health to his incentive-laden contract in which his salary only becomes guaranteed if he plays a certain number of games. Others see the combination of his size and the force with which he plays as a combination destined to break his body. Others simply don\u2019t believe one healthy season erases four injury-riddled ones.<\/p>\n
Williamson understands the skepticism. But, he said, \u201cI feel like I’ve shown enough this year to be able to say, like, \u2018This is what it’s gonna look like.\u2019 Even when I did have an injury (he strained his hip in early December), I was projected to miss four to six weeks, and instead I was back in two and then went on a long stretch of consecutive games.\u201d<\/p>\n
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That, he believes, was no accident. In the offseason, Williamson began working with a new trainer. \u201cBefore, I\u2019d get treatment and do basic stuff like table time,\u201d Williamson said. \u201cBut now it’s things like hyperbaric chambers and red light chambers.\u201d His teammates say they notice a difference. \u201cHe\u2019s taking the management of his body more seriously than ever before,\u201d Trey Murphy said. What Borrego points to, though, is that not only has Williamson played the majority of games this season, but \u201cwe haven\u2019t even had to have a single conversation where I have to go and ask him if he\u2019s in. He\u2019s fully bought in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is all that enough to convince another team to take a flyer? Maybe a playoff team stuck in purgatory and in desperate need of a ceiling-raiser. Or maybe a bottom-feeder that strikes out in the lottery and needs something else to sell to its fans. Or maybe, in the end, the Pelicans, who have more insight on Williamson than anyone else, decide that this post All-Star break upswing is real and that it\u2019s worth keeping their best player around.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRight now it\u2019s about, just, self-identity,\u201d Williamson said when asked about the Pelicans\u2019 late-season turnaround. \u201cWe know what we want to do and how we want to grow going into the offseason and leading into next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we’re taking a step in the right direction because at the moment we can only control what we can control,\u201d Williamson added. He was referring to the team, but he might as well have been speaking about himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On March 1, the New Orleans Pelicans took the floor without Zion Williamson. Normally, this wouldn\u2019t be worth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[208,7,803,4190,3125,6,478,470,191,4073,4072,675,4439,4203,12106,468,814],"class_list":{"0":"post-692098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-derik-queen","11":"tag-james-borrego","12":"tag-joe-dumars","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-new-orleans","15":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","16":"tag-new-york-knicks","17":"tag-neworleans","18":"tag-neworleanspelicans","19":"tag-pelicans","20":"tag-the-pelicans","21":"tag-trey-murphy","22":"tag-troy-weaver","23":"tag-washington-wizards","24":"tag-zion-williamson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692098","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=692098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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