Fact or fiction: Zion Williamson should have a trade market

Each week during the 2024-25 NBA season, we’ll dig deeper into some of the league’s biggest storylines to try to determine whether the trends are based more on fact or fiction.

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Fact or fiction: There should be a trade market for Zion Williamson

We’re only eight months away from the last time we wondered if Zion Williamson could anchor a contender, like he torched LeBron James in a play-in tournament game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Except, in a microcosm of his young career, Williamson left that outing with a left hamstring injury that subsequently cost him the New Orleans Pelicans’ entire first-round playoff series with the Thunder. Oklahoma City. He hasn’t played in a single playoff game in six seasons. Williamson’s impact is more theoretical than real.

Is there somewhere but New Orleans Who still wants to test this theory?

Williamson returned from another left hamstring injury to total 22 points, six rebounds and four assists in 28 minutes Tuesday, the latest glimpse of the potential that made him the No. 1 overall pick in 2019. He was then excluded from the second evening. of a consecutive match on Wednesday and was suspended by the team for one game for “violation of team policies”“, which according to reports included being late to several practices and the team flying to Philadelphia on Thursday.

When healthy, Williamson is one of the most enticing talents in the league. Although he never made an All-NBA team, he earned two All-Star selections, in 2021 and 2023, when he finished both seasons on the injured list. No one averaging 24-6-4 in their career has had a true shooting percentage as high as Williamson (62.7 TS%). Only Kevin Durant is in the right range.

Normally, that would be enough for most teams to take a flyer on Williamson. The possibility of landing one of these guys – in a league that can only be won with one of these guys – presents considerable injury risk, especially for a team that otherwise has no real chance of winning. acquire a player of this caliber.

A team like New Orleans.

The Pelicans would have bought Williamson in his attempts to land a top pick in the 2023 draft, and less than 18 months later, they are the worst team in the Western Conference – vying for a top pick. If New Orleans was still willing to move on from Williamson, who would care? This makes a lot of sense.

And the Pelicans could surely find a trade partner. If the Washington Wizards traded the remaining four years of Bradley Beal’s supermax contract, anyone could be dealt, especially Williamson, a potentially game-changing 24-year-old. The question isn’t whether anyone would trade for Williamson; that’s if they should.

According to Basketball Reference’s database, only four other players in NBA history are shorter than 6-foot-10 and weigh more than 280 pounds: Glen Davis, Robert Traylor, Jahidi White and Oliver Miller. All were out of the league by the age of 30. That’s the odds Williamson faces, even recognizing he’s the most athletic of them all. (Which might actually make it less likely that he’ll see a game in the 2030s.)

Another inglorious list includes Williamson, that of big men whose careers were ravaged by injuries. Bill Walton, Ralph Sampson, Yao Ming, these guys are not in the best health. Joel Embiid is the best case scenario, and you won’t find a ton of teams lining up for the $250 million remaining on his contract. The Philadelphia 76ers have spent the last decade servicing a player with unreliable availability.

Williamson has about half of the money remaining on his contract, which runs until his 27th birthday. The window for him to find his place as an influential superstar is the remainder of this contract, before his journeyman era, when contracts dwindle and expectations diminish, until the league completely loses its faith.

What will the Pelicans get for Williamson anyway? We still have two years of injury history since the last time the top end of the lottery turned them down for trades. A draft stash is not their problem. They can still hope for another pick to become the next face of this franchise. The only two others, Chris Paul and Anthony Davis, have left for bigger markets. They have never signed a high-profile free agent. Whatever they get for Williamson, they don’t get any closer to a championship than the possibility of him putting it all together.

What the Pelicans should do is trade everyone not named Herb Jones, Trey Murphy III, Yves Missi and maybe Jose Alvarado. Cut your salary and build from the bottom up, whatever pick they land after this terrible season, as if Williamson isn’t there, and if he is, well, maybe he will then issue his title.

This is the hope of New Orleans. A wing and a prayer. Zion Williamson’s health.

This is a multi-year process that, if unsuccessful, will eventually free up salary cap flexibility.

There is no other way from here. What the Pelicans are doing, hoarding talent, even if it hampers their internal development, is clearly not working. Brandon Ingram, Dejounte Murray and CJ McCollum are not contenders. They’ve reached their ceiling in the NBA, and trading Williamson is a lateral move.

No other team can afford this strategy, rebuilding its roster around prospects and picks, while keeping Williamson’s contract along for the ride. Of course, no one should ask for this situation. Why trade something of value for a max-salary player who hasn’t made the playoffs for six seasons?

But if the Pelicans, a team with no other hope, lose hope on Williamson, a player who embodies nothing but hope, then how do we interpret that? So there is no hope for Zion, and who wants this world?

Determination: Fiction. There should be no trade market for Zion Williamson. Hope for him lives in New Orleans, even if it is diminished, and once the Pelicans give up on their dream, it’s only a matter of time before the league does too.