One didn’t have to be an NBA scout or basketball savant to realize that Zion Williamson was a special kind of talent. The New Orleans Pelicans did what everybody would’ve done and drafted him first overall.
Of course, Zion came with some baggage — no pun intended — as there were serious concerns about his weight and how his body would hold up, especially after some injuries in college.
Those durability issues are the main reason why he has been tangled up in countless trade rumors over the past couple of years. However, GM David Griffin claims they’ve never actually considered moving on from him.
Pelicans Never Wanted To Trade Zion
“I think what’s unfortunate is that he’s a name that generates clicks no matter what the link says,” Griffin said. “Zion puts on his socks. People click on that. So it makes it really easy for people to manufacture rumors around him — because they don’t have to have any actual credibility behind what they say to generate clicks.”
“As a society, this isn’t [just] true of sports, this is true across all platforms — reality doesn’t matter anymore,” added Griffin. “Generating clicks matters. So unfortunately for Zion, he’s just an oddity and somebody that people pay a great deal of attention to and manufacture a lot of stories around. We never had a single [trade] conversation that Zion was part of.”
The jury is still out on him, as he’s dominated when available, but that has happened in less than 50% of the games since he entered the league. Should that trend continue, the Pelicans might have to at least test the field for their star youngster.