Is dominant Williamson a thing of the past?
There were so many high hopes for Zion Williamson, going back as far as his high school days in South Carolina. He was a once-in-a-lifetime combination of an offensive lineman’s size and a hurdler’s athleticism.
But there have always been concerns. Could Williamson’s body withstand the pounding of his own weight? Could he weather the torque from those dunks and jarring tumbles to the floor?
His body hasn’t been able to take the pounding, and Williamson again was a spectator when the Pelicans were disposed of by the Thunder in a play-in game. Williamson has played in 29 games the past two seasons because of various injuries.
He missed last season with a foot fracture. This season, it was a hamstring injury more than three months ago. There had been hope that Williamson would return late this season, but he aggravated the injury and hasn’t fully recovered. But that didn’t stop Williamson from pulling off windmill dunks during a pregame workout on Wednesday.
Lower-extremity injuries are not surprising for Williamson because of his 285-pound frame, and the Pelicans’ worst nightmares of drafting him first over Ja Morant in 2019 have been realized. When Williamson plays, he’s spectacular. But he doesn’t play, and the Pelicans aren’t contenders. Williamson has played in 114 of a possible 308 games since entering the league.
However, there’s still reason for optimism. Williamson doesn’t turn 23 until July, and he should be healthy next season. Also, the Pelicans included millions of non-guaranteed dollars in his five-year contract extension because of his injury history. But fans are being denied the pleasure of seeing Williamson’s brilliance.
Some observers are beginning to question his desire to play, his dedication to the game, and his conditioning plan.
“For those people who think I just want to sit on the sideline just to sit over there, I don’t know why people think that,” he said. “I just want to be playing basketball for real.”
The perception is Williamson didn’t try hard enough to come back late this season. The team denied that it cleared him to play or practice. But the windmill dunks went viral and prompted some to wonder if he could indeed have played.
Williamson caused even more controversy when he said he felt fine physically but was mentally affected by his rash of injuries.
“It’s just a matter of when I feel like myself,” he said. “I can’t lie. It’s tough. From my perspective, I just want to play basketball. I want to hoop. I want to play the game I love. But the reality is, whether I check my phone or just watching TV, no matter what it is, I can’t really escape what the world thinks, what people’s opinions are, so it’s frustrating.”
What some misunderstand is the mental toll that criticism can take on players, especially younger ones. Williamson is 22 and understands that he’s approaching bust territory.
There have been times when Williamson has lost weight. He looked locked in before the 2020-21 season, and played 61 of 72 games, averaging 27 points and 7.2 rebounds to make his first All-Star team. But he hasn’t been able to repeat that success, and some are wondering if he ever will.
“It’s a little bit of a mental battle because when I reaggravated [the hamstring] in February it was tough, so when I got to make certain moves, there is that hesitation,” he said. “I understand the magnitude of these games and I don’t want to be out there hesitating or doing something that may affect my team in a bad way.”
Will he get that edge back this summer? Will it be in some sweltering gym in a personal workout that he feels completely comfortable with his hamstring? Neither he nor the organization knows the answer. But the reality is he’s testing the Pelicans’ patience. A franchise that wanted to be a contender this season after building a team around Williamson and Brandon Ingram was again eliminated early.
Faith and confidence are waning because Williamson hasn’t significantly changed his body since entering the NBA. So, there may not be a happy ending to this story.
“At some point, I do have to speak for myself and at this current moment it is important,” he said. “If I feel like Zion, I will be out there. I’m just a competitor, I don’t want to be out there and just be in my own head and affect the team when I can just be on the sideline supporting. I know myself. If I was to go out there, I would be in my head. I would hesitate on certain moves and that would affect the game.”
Can Clippers make a run?
The Clippers carried NBA Finals aspirations at the beginning of the season with a healthy Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. But Leonard missed several games in the first two-thirds of the season because of load management, and George played in just 56 games and is expected to miss most if not all of the first-round playoff series against the Suns because of a knee injury.
In what could be the most intriguing series of the playoffs, the Clippers will have to rely heavily on Leonard, who played in 24 of the team’s final 28 games and is healthy. His primary responsibility will be to contain Kevin Durant, who has not lost a game in which he’s played since joining the Suns in February.
“He’s a great player,” Leonard said of Durant. “These are the fun parts of it. Just going out there, getting to compete against a guy like him that’s been doing it year after year. Yeah, everybody is going to have to take the challenge, not just me. It is a team sport, so . . . ”
Leonard missed the 2021-22 season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and the Clippers have been cautious since his return. He has missed 30 games because of load management but has been ramping up his workload in recent weeks.
In 18 games after the All-Star break, Leonard averaged 27.1 points, 53.8 percent shooting, and 47 percent from the 3-point line. The Clippers scored 128 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor.
“That was my main focus this year, just trying to get through the season healthy,” said Leonard, “and I’ll see where my game play goes after that.”
The Clippers loaded their roster for a deep playoff run. Norman Powell has been stellar off the bench. Miles Plumlee, Eric Gordon, and Bones Hyland were acquired before the trade deadline to supplement the scoring and defense. But the club has been wildly inconsistent, hence the fifth seed in the West. And George was playing at an All-Star level before his injury. The hope is Powell, Marcus Morris, Gordon, and the much maligned but recently productive Russell Westbrook can compensate.
“It’s just like any other game really. It’s another basketball game. There’s just a title on it now,” said Leonard. “You have a chance to get an ultimate goal for a team. I mean, that’s just the focus level. It’s not just starting now, and it’s been like that throughout the year, throughout my playing career, trying to play both ends, and just hopefully there’s carryover.”
The Leonard-George duo has fallen short of expectations since joining the Clippers in 2019. They blew a 3-1 lead to the Nuggets in the bubble, then lost to the Suns in the Western Conference finals in 2021 with Leonard out.
“I didn’t feel like we weren’t going to make the playoffs,” Leonard said of this season. “I mean, if you’re talking about the aspect as a team, I mean, we’ll see. It’s the first year back, and it’s a challenge, in front of me, in front of everybody on the team, we’ll have to just figure it out.”
Durant presents a matchup challenge for any defender. The Clippers will have to find a way to prevent him from getting to his desired shooting spots. The Celtics blitzed Durant last season in their first-round win over the Nets, forcing him into turnovers and rushed shots. That will be difficult to repeat for the Clippers.
“That’s what it’s about, how he gets to his spots, shooting over guys, two hands throughout his whole career, and it’s very impressive,” Leonard said.
“Year after year, he’s doing it, and he’s doing it at a high percentage. Yeah, both ways, left, right, shooting over everybody.”
Money from NIL tough to pass up
LSU’s Angel Reese has earned nearly $2 million in NIL (name, image, likeness) money, and she has at least another season in college. Other college standouts have decided to remain in school because of the calculated risk of declaring for the WNBA Draft and not being selected, or perhaps being cut in training camp.
Dozens of players who passed on an extra COVID year to become draft-eligible were not selected. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert understands the perception that professional life may be more difficult for players than college with NIL opportunities.
“I think we have a fabulous draft class this year,” she said. “Everyone we were kind of looking at to come into the league, and I think our general managers were looking at, is in this draft class this year. Obviously, there were a few that decided to stay.
“Look, I was a Division 1 both college basketball player and lacrosse player. If I could’ve played for one more year — by the way, if I could go back and play today at the age of 58, I would go back and play today. I totally understand it. I understand the opportunities to stay in college.”
Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, two players who could boost the WNBA brand, can remain in school for two more years.
“We’re going to have such depth in our next few draft classes, so I’m not worried about the extra COVID year,” Engelbert said. “I think next year technically is the last year of the extra COVID year, and so if players decide to stay, I think some players were looking at where they might fall in the draft class and things like that. I think it’s great that we have these options and the depth in this league and the quality of play in this league.
“I was in Dallas [for the Final Four]. It was amazing. It was everything you thought it was going to be but more. And then the viewership being on ABC on Sunday — we do so great when we’re on ABC, as well, at the WNBA. But we do need to do, as I’ve stood up here and said before, a great job of taking kind of these really star players who have huge followership, whether through their NIL deals or just through their social media following.”
But the reality is WNBA salaries can’t compete with what players such as Reese can make through NIL, and we’re talking about the best professional women’s basketball league in the world. The WNBA is working feverishly to sell itself.
“But certainly these national NIL deals — I was wrong about that,” said Engelbert. “I thought it’s just another area for women to be undervalued in sports, but I was wrong about that because the NCAA women’s basketball players have been highly successful in signing these NIL deals. I think it’s a huge positive for us.”
Engelbert’s job is to help improve the conditions for WNBA players, including increasing chances at making rosters, to make the league more attractive.
“Now we have to make sure we take these great players and as they come into our league we continue to market them, put the marketing dollars behind them,” she said. “I know Phil Cook, our CMO, is working very hard on making sure that integration from NCAA into the WNBA is something that we can take advantage of that momentum, rather than what we might have done in prior years, which is, OK, now they’re in our league and they’re on a team where you don’t have the loyalty of that college town following them. Now we’ve got to bring those fans along with us.
“I think the attention this year on the March Madness tournament for the women’s national champion — think about LSU and 102 points. How many points were scored [by the winning team] in the men’s final? Think about that, [nearly] 30 more points in the same amount of time scored by LSU, and just what a great testament to the quality of the game and these players coming into our league.”
Layups
The coaching carousel didn’t take long to begin turning as jobs in Detroit and Houston opened before the regular season ended. Dwane Casey announced he would leave his post with the Pistons after five seasons with just one playoff appearance. Casey will take a position in the Detroit front office, and the Pistons will look for a coach who can take a young, talented roster to the next level. Former Celtics coach Ime Udoka is considered a candidate, and he is already interviewing for the position in Houston. Udoka recently made his first public appearance since his suspension from the Celtics, attending the Clippers-Lakers game on April 5. The Rockets, meanwhile, did not renew the contract of Stephen Silas after three seasons. Silas was doomed from the start with James Harden asking out of Houston early in Silas’s tenure, and the Rockets deciding to tank for two seasons to get high draft picks. The issue for Silas was the lack of development of potential standouts such as Jalen Green and Kevin Porter Jr. The Rockets were a terrible defensive team, with the young players appearing focused on their own numbers. Udoka’s history of being a disciplinarian and getting players to invest on the defensive end likely will help his chances . . . Miles Bridges was suspended for 30 games for pleading no contest to an assault charge with his former girlfriend and could return early next season. Bridges missed all of this past season after the Hornets did not sign him to a contract, while other teams were waiting for an NBA penalty before potentially signing the forward. Bridges was a rising star for the Hornets before the incident and was eligible for a maximum rookie contract. Because Bridges missed all of this past season, the NBA counted that toward his suspension, so he will be eligible to play after sitting out 10 games next season . . . The Mavericks were fined $750,000 for resting Kyrie Irving, playing Luka Doncic for only one quarter, and resting other starters in a loss to the Bulls while they were still mathematically eligible to reach the Play-In Tournament. The Mavericks chose to lessen their chances to win the game because they wanted to increase the likelihood of getting their first-round pick in June’s draft, which is top-10 protected. If the Mavericks select outside the top 10, their pick goes to the Knicks as a part of the Kristaps Porzingis trade in 2019.