Pelicans' Zion Williamson hit with alarming hamstring injury timeline
11/11/2024 06:06 PM
The New Orleans Pelicans have already been ravaged by injuries this season, and it has reached the point where their season is in danger of going off the rails. Multiple role players have missed time, leaving the Pelicans without a ton of depth to work with early in the season.
Those injury problems got exponentially worse on Saturday when the Pelicans announced that Williamson will be out indefinitely due to a hamstring strain. On Monday, an official timetable of around four-to-six weeks was reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania on NBA Today.
"The Pelicans are bracing for [Zion Williamson] to be out about 4-6 weeks, and his return will be based on rehab and how that treatment goes on that hamstring strain."
ESPN's @ShamsCharania on Zion Williamson's hamstring injury.pic.twitter.com/7OG1K0bEvG
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) November 11, 2024
“Zion Williamson will be out for several weeks I’m told,” Charania reported on Monday. “This is an injury that the Pelicans are bracing for him to be out about four-to-six weeks. His return will be based on rehab and how that treatment goes on that hamstring strain. We know the Pelicans with Zion Williamson, they said indefinitely, we know that they are not sure yet exactly how long this rehab is going to take for him.”
The fact that Williamson is dealing with another hamstring injury will be a major red flag for a lot of Pelicans fans and fans of other teams around the league. During the 2022-23 season, Williamson strained him hamstring and ended up missing the final four months of the season. Pelicans fans are hoping that that isn’t the case for their franchise player this time around.
Pelicans’ injuries are blowing their season up from the start
It feels like the Pelicans have had their season hampered or derailed by injuries for an incalculable number of years in a row now, but this season may be the worst of the bunch. Five of the team’s top players have all missed significant time already, and they’re only 10 games in.
Emerging wing Trey Murphy III hasn’t played this season due to a hamstring injury of his own. His 3-and-D counterpart, Herb Jones, has missed six games this season already. CJ McCollum has also missed six games, and point guard Dejounte Murray has missed nine games after breaking his hand in the season opener. Now, the Pelicans will have to manage all of those ailments along with Williamson’s extended absence.
It’s unclear at the moment how the Pelicans are going to be able to tread water with Williamson on the bench. New Orleans is currently 3-7 on the season, which is good for 13th in the Western Conference. At the moment, there are 10 teams in the West who have a winning record, so the Pelicans are already a good ways behind. They are just 1-3 without Williamson in the lineup, so they’re going to have to make a quick adjustment.
If they’re unable to adjust to this high volume of injuries, or if they don’t get these guys back very soon, this season is just going to spiral out of control. It would be impossible for nearly any team to sustain this amount of injuries to almost all of its key contributors and continue to win games, and this Pelicans team is no different. By the time Williamson comes back, it may already be too late.
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