Deng retires after 15 seasons
Zion Williamson, who has been on fire in the NBA pre-season after being made the top draft pick by the New Orleans Pelicans, will miss the team’s final pre-season game with a sore right knee.
Williamson has put up sensational numbers in the pre-season, but his professional debut at Madison Square Garden is on hold after New Orleans tweeted he would miss Friday’s game (Saturday Phl time) against the Knicks.
Williamson missed the final six games of the Duke University regular season last year after spraining his knee in a game against North Carolina.
Williamson has averaged 23.3 points in 27.3 minutes per game in the pre-season, shooting an astonishing 71 percent from the field.
“He’s a monster,” Knicks coach David Fizdale said Thursday, before he knew his team wouldn’t be going up against Williamson this week.
“It’s exactly what I think everybody thought he was going to be. He’s a beast. He’s just going to continue to get better and better. We understand that
School
School kid is a heck of a player.”
The Pelicans said that Williamson did not make the trip with the team to New York and is being evaluated.
The NBA season tips off on Tuesday with two games. The Pelicans are due to play the reigning champion Raptors in Toronto.
Luol Deng, who made a journey from South Sudan to NBA stardom, is calling it quits after a 15-year career after signing a one-day contract with the Chicago Bulls.
The deal announced Thursday (Friday Phl time) allows the 2012 London Olympian, a stalwart for Britain’s basketball squad, to close out his NBA days with the same club where he debuted after being selected seventh overall in the 2004 NBA Draft.
Deng, 34, was a child when he fled what is now South Sudan with his family for Egypt and they eventually settled in London, where Deng discovered basketball.
After a stellar single season at Duke University, Deng entered the NBA and helped Chicago end a sevenyear playoff drought before a season-ending wrist injury cut his campaign short after 61 games.