Building this list and not including Zion Williamson would be flat-out reckless.<\/p>\n
Staying healthy and leading the New Orleans Pelicans to a top-six spot in the Western Conference is the only scenario in which the 25-year-old escapes trade-request watch. We can envision him being available enough to drive winning, because it’s happened once or twice before. The problem is, the Pelicans aren’t built to win even if he’s available.<\/p>\n
New Orleans has zero healthy primary playmakers beyond Williamson himself, a center rotation that is neither proven nor ideally suited to its best player and very little defense. It will require Peak Zion and loads of help from the implosive Sacramento Kings and\/or Phoenix Suns just to finish better than 13th in the West.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Imagining a Zion trade request is far easier than picturing the Pelicans contending for a playoff spot. Healthy, not healthy, playing like an MVP, having a career-worst season, landing somewhere in the middle\u2014it doesn’t matter. He could grow wary of repping a franchise addicted to spinning its wheels and long for a fresh start\u2026if he hasn’t already.<\/p>\n
Dan Favale is a National NBA Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale<\/a>), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks<\/a> podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report’s Grant Hughes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Building this list and not including Zion Williamson would be flat-out reckless. Staying healthy and leading the New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-197450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}