Fact from fiction: Zion Williamson should have a trade market

Each week during the 2024-2025 NBA season, we’ll dive deeper into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an effort to determine whether trends are based more on fact or fiction.

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Fact from fiction: There should be a trade market for Zion Williamson

We’re just eight months removed from the last time we wondered if Zion Williamson could anchor a contender, when he torched LeBron James in a play-in tournament game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Except in a microcosm of his young career, Williamson left that outing with a left hamstring injury that later cost him the New Orleans Pelicans’ entire first-round playoff series with the Oklahoma City Thunder. He hasn’t played in a single playoff game in six seasons. Williamson’s impact is more theoretical than factual.

Is there anywhere other than New Orleans that still wants to test that theory?

Williamson returned from another left hamstring injury on Tuesday and totaled 22 points, six rebounds and four assists in 28 minutes, the latest glimpse of the potential that made him the No. 1 overall pick in 2019.

When healthy, Williamson was one of the league’s most enticing talents. While he has never made an All-NBA team, he has earned a pair of All-Star selections, in 2021 and 2023, when he finished both seasons on the injured list. No one who has averaged 24-6-4 in his career has had as high a shooting percentage as Williamson (62.7 TS%). Only Kevin Durant is in the margins.

Normally, this would be enough for most teams to get Williamson. The opportunity to land one of these guys – in a league that can only be won with one of these guys – is worth a significant injury risk, especially for a team that otherwise has no real chance of landing a player from that to acquire caliber.

A team like New Orleans.

The Pelicans reportedly acquired Williamson in their efforts to land a top pick in the 2023 draft, and less than 18 months later they are the worst team in the Western Conference – in line for a top pick. If New Orleans was still willing to move on from Williamson, who would turn a blind eye? It makes a lot of sense.

And the Pelicans could certainly find a trade partner. If the Washington Wizards trade the remaining four years of Bradley Beal’s supermax contract, anyone could be dealt, especially Williamson, a potentially paradigm-changing 24-year-old. The question isn’t whether anyone would want to trade for Williamson; it’s like them should.

According to Basketball Reference’s database, only four other players in NBA history are listed as shorter than 6-foot-1 and heavier than 280 pounds: Glen Davis, Robert Traylor, Jahidi White and Oliver Miller. They were all out of the league by age 30. This is the probability that Williamson faces, even as he acknowledges he is the most athletic of them all. (Which might make it less likely that he’ll see a game in the 2030s.)

Another inglorious list includes Williamson, one of the big men whose career was blighted by injuries. Bill Walton, Ralph Sampson, Yao Ming, these guys haven’t gotten any healthier. Joel Embiid is the best-case scenario, and not many teams will be lining up for the $250 million remaining on his contract. The Philadelphia 76ers have spent the last decade employing a player whose availability is unreliable.

Williamson has about half the money left on his deal, which runs through his 27th birthday. The period in which he can find his place as an impactful superstar is the remainder of that contract, before his journeyman era, where contracts dwindle and expectations diminish until the league loses confidence completely.

What are the Pelicans actually going to get for Williamson? We still have two years of injury history since the last time the top draft picks turned them down for a trade. A draft stock is not their problem. They can still hope that a new pick will be the next face of this franchise. The only other two, Chris Paul and Anthony Davis, left for bigger markets. They’ve never signed a top free agent. Whatever they get for Williamson won’t get them any closer to a championship than the possibility of him putting it all together.

What the Pelicans should do is trade anyone not named Herb Jones, Trey Murphy III, Yves Missi and maybe Jose Alvarado. Losing wages and building from the bottom up with whatever choice they get in this awful season, as if Williamson wasn’t there, and if he is, well, he might hand over their title.

That’s the hope for New Orleans. A wing and a prayer. Zion Williamson’s health.

It’s a years-long process that, if failed, will ultimately free up salary cap flexibility.

There is no other path from here. What the Pelicans are doing: stockpiling talent, even if it hinders their internal development, is clearly not working. Brandon Ingram, Dejounte Murray and CJ McCollum are not contenders. They have reached their ceiling on the NBA floor and trading Williamson is a lateral move.

No other team can afford this strategy of rebuilding their roster based on prospects and picks while carrying Williamson’s contract along for the ride. Of course, no one should ask for this situation. Why trade anything of value for a max salary player who hasn’t gotten to the playoffs healthy in six seasons?

But if the Pelicans, a team with no other hope, give up hope on Williamson, a player who embodies nothing but hope, how should we interpret that? So there is no hope for Zion, and who wants that world?

Provision: Fiction. There should be no trade market for Zion Williamson. Hope for him lives in New Orleans, however slim, and once the Pelicans give up on the dream, it’s only a matter of time before the league does too.