New Orleans Pelicans

New Orleans Pelicans star forward Zion Williamson is still working his way back to the court after undergoing offseason foot surgery, and he's taking the next step in his recovery.

The Pelicans announced Williamson has been cleared to resume contact drills. The team says he will start with one-on-one drills before progressing to full-team workouts.

Williamson underwent medical imaging on his right foot Nov. 11 and is set to undergo further imaging Nov. 24 to determine his availability to return to team drills. There is still no official timetable for when he will be able to take the floor this season.

At 21 years old, Williamson is considered one of the most promising young talents in the NBA. He became the fourth-youngest player ever to be selected to an All-Star Game last year, and he has career averages of 25.7 points and 7.0 rebounds on 60.4 percent shooting from the field in two seasons.

But injuries have been an issue for Williamson thus far. He was out for the first three months of his rookie year after suffering a torn meniscus, and he missed 11 games last season with toe and finger injuries. In two years, Williamson has played in just 85 games.

The Pelicans have struggled in Williamson's absence this season, ranking second-to-last in the Western Conference with a 2-13 record. New Orleans ranks 26th in the NBA in both offense (102.0 points per game) and defense (111.3). Leading scorer Brandon Ingram missed seven games with a hip injury before returning Saturday.

While they await Williamson's return, things won't get easier for the Pelicans. They will look to bounce back from Monday's loss to the Washington Wizards with a road game on Wednesday against the Miami Heat, who are 9-5.

New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson is still not close to a return to the court after suffering a fractured right foot.

ESPN's Brian Windhorst provided the latest on the forward Thursday (1:52):

"The good news is he is working very hard, he is putting in the sweat equity, he is getting closer, but he is still weeks away," Windhorst said.

Windhorst projected a December return for Williamson, who needs positive results from next week's scans before even returning to practice. 

Pelicans coach Willie Green provided an update on Williamson earlier this month, saying that the player is "progressing."

"He’s cutting, doing explosive work, running, so he’s getting closer and closer," Green said. "But it’s one of those injuries where we want to be really diligent, especially with the foot. We want to be careful with when we put him back on the floor at full go."

New Orleans has struggled mightily without Williamson this season, especially with Brandon Ingram also missing time due to a hip injury. The team is just 1-11 with eight straight losses heading into Thursday.

Williamson's return would go a long way toward turning things around after he averaged 27.0 points per game last year, eighth-most in the NBA. The All-Star added 7.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game while hitting 61.1 percent of his field-goal attempts.

The 2019 No. 1 overall pick finished 11th in the NBA in win shares, per Basketball Reference.

It makes his absence even more significant as the Pelicans must survive at least a few more weeks without Williamson.    

New Orleans Pelicans head coach Willie Green lamented his team's effort in a 108-100 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night, which extended their losing streak to eight.

Green, who's in his first year coaching the Pelicans, told reporters he wasn't happy with the team as their record fell to an NBA-worst 1-11:

It's not the losing streak. It's not one quarter. It's our approach to this game. There were moments in the game where we just didn't have guys who didn't compete hard enough for me. Hard enough for our team. That's a non-negotiable for me. That's the deal. That's who we are. As the leader of this team, I can't have that. I can't have guys on the floor if they aren't going to give 110 percent.

The Pelicans' record carries an asterisk since they've played the entire season without 2019 first overall pick Zion Williamson and the past six games without 2020 All-Star Brandon Ingram.

Regardless, the losses are piling up quickly for New Orleans, and it appeared the frustration was mounting against OKC as it racked up five technical fouls by four different players. Josh Hart was ejected following two technicals for arguing a call late in the second quarter.

Green said his players can't expect to get every call and must respond differently than they did:

Our guys thought they got fouled, and we didn't get the call. But we aren't going to get those calls. We haven't earned them. So what are we complaining about? Until we earn it, we're not gonna get that. That's the deal. I talked to our guys about it. We have to keep our composure. Our margin for error is too small to do what we did tonight.

The 40-year-old former NBA guard explained his message in practice Thursday will be, "We're better than this."

New Orleans will be a far more competitive team when Ingram and Williamson return, but the margin for error in terms of making a charge toward a playoff berth is already diminishing rapidly.

The schedule doesn't do the Pelicans any favors either as 11 of their next 13 games come against teams with a winning record.

Next up is a home game against the Brooklyn Nets (8-4) on Friday night.

As the New Orleans Pelicans remain mired in one of the poorest starts to this NBA season, league-wide speculation has only increased about the job security of executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin. 

The rumblings began following the Pelicans' 0-3 start (currently a league-worst 1-11 after Wednesday’s loss to OKC), coupled with Griffin's public handling of All-Star forward Zion Williamson's prolonged recovery from offseason foot surgery. New Orleans brass certainly hoped Griffin's tenure would finally lead to a playoff berth, despite its tenuous two years building around Williamson.

Word of a heated exchange between the chief executive and Sacramento Kings associate head coach Alvin Gentry has since circled around the league.

Griffin and Gentry first connected during a shared tenure in Phoenix in the Steve Nash era. Later, as the Pelicans head coach from 2015 to 2020, Gentry played an integral role in helping Griffin land New Orleans' head of basketball operations position in 2019, only for the executive to fire Gentry following just one season. 

While New Orleans projected optimism about competing for a postseason berth during the Orlando bubble, Gentry and a large portion of Pelicans staffers were already prepared for the coach's ouster, sources said, as Griffin was widely known to covet Ty Lue, who was the head coach in Cleveland when Griffin served as the general manager for LeBron James' 2016 championship team. Griffin would often tell team and other league officials that he'd given Gentry "all the answers to the test, and he still fails," sources confirmed to B/R.

That expression was first reported in a September article from NOLA.com, which served as the catalyst for Griffin and Gentry's exchange in New Orleans, sources told B/R. After the Kings defeated the Pelicans 113-109 on Oct. 29, Griffin approached Gentry in the bowels of Smoothie King Center to offer a warm hello to his former head coach, yet Gentry brushed off his initial efforts as inauthentic. 

From there, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the incident, Griffin denied the findings of the NOLA.com article, particularly his "answers to the test" line, and the notion that he played piano for Williamson during the team's bubble stay in Disney World. 

Gentry responded with his own choice words, noting how his eventual replacement, Stan Van Gundy, who was also fired after one season in New Orleans, finished just one game better (31-41) than the Pelicans did under Gentry (30-42) the year he was let go. "You must not have given Stan the answers to the test, either," Gentry shouted at Griffin, according to multiple sources, and the two men had to be separated.

Though Pelican sources say the exchange would have no effect on Griffin's job status, it did become part of the increasing conversation around the league about Griffin's future in New Orleans.

League observers have noted New Orleans' repeated appearances in national television games, that were supposed to feature Williamson, have cast a far larger spotlight on the Pelicans' losing dynamic than otherwise would have existed. 

Griffin was on hand Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden with the rest of the NBA flock that attended the Champions Classic, scouting top Duke prospect Paolo Banchero, among others, and Pelicans staffers have proceeded as normal. 

But it's difficult to imagine New Orleans' slow start turning around any time soon. In addition to Williamson, All-Star scorer Brandon Ingram has been sidelined for the past six games with a hip contusion. 

Head coach Willie Green, the third in Griffin's three seasons in New Orleans, announced on Nov. 1 it will take 2-3 weeks for Williamson's next update in his recovery, let alone a plan to return to game action, sparking concern around the league that Williamson may not see the floor until January.

(Editor's note: This article was updated to correct the date and location of the exchange between Griffin and Gentry, to clarify the exchange’s effect on the discussion of Griffin’s job status, and to adjust the headline to better reflect the article.) 

Jake Fischer covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is the author of Built to Lose: How the NBA's Tanking Era Changed the League Forever.

New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson will miss at least 2-3 more weeks as he continues to rehab his foot injury.

Pelicans head coach Willie Green told reporters Williamson was "progressing" in his recovery, but will undergo testing after the two-to-three-week timeline to determine his availability for five-on-five action.

"He's cutting. He's doing explosive work. He's running. He's getting closer and closer," Green told reporters Monday. "It's just one of those injuries where we want to be really diligent, especially with the foot, of being careful when we put him back on the floor at full go."

Williamson has yet to play this season for the Pelicans in his third NBA season after his injury was revealed in September. 

He's been sensational for the Pels despite injuries (torn meniscus in 2019-20 that led to him playing only 24 regular-season games) and some inconsistency on the sidelines (the Pels have employed Alvin Gentry, Stan Van Gundy and now Green as their head coach in each of the past three years, respectively).

The team has also struggled around him, going 30-42 in 2019-20 before improving to 31-41 in 2020-21.

Williamson has done his part, posting 25.7 points on 60.4 percent shooting and 7.0 rebounds in 31.7 minutes per game in his first two seasons. His 27.1 player efficiency rating was fourth in the NBA last year, per Basketball Reference.

This year's squad looks different, with the team adding some notable veteran names in center Jonas Valanciunas and guard Devonte' Graham in the offseason. Without Williamson, the Pelicans have gotten off to a 1-6 start, losing their last three games.

Brandon Ingram has taken on a larger role to start the season, averaging 25 points per game. He will continue to do so until the Pelicans can get Williamson back in the lineup.

New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson will undergo scans on his right foot this week to determine the next step in his recovery.

Pelicans president of basketball operations David Griffin told ESPN's Cassidy Hubbarth that the team is waiting for the bone to heal properly.

Williamson suffered a broken foot over the summer and is yet to have a timetable for his return to game action. He is yet to participate in any basketball activities and has only been running in straight lines.

“You can see he is progressing and doing more and more on the floor,” Pelicans coach Willie Green told reporters Wednesday. “Once he has his latest round of scans, then we’ll have a clearer picture of where we go from here. But he’s getting better, he’s progressing, he’s on the floor now, running, doing a lot more. We’ll have an update soon.”

Williamson has been spectacular when he healthy, coming off a 2020-21 campaign that saw him average 27.0 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game to earn his first All-Star berth.

Staying healthy has been the main issue. Williamson missed 58 games during his rookie season with a knee injury and management, and he sat out 11 contests in 2020-21. By he time Williamson returns, it's almost certain he will have missed a full NBA season less than three years into his NBA career.

Concern about Williamson's body type and whether it would withstand the rigors of a full NBA season was perhaps the only knock on him coming out of college.

The Pelicans are determined to have Williamson at 100 percent when he returns and have made it publicly known they are working with him and his management on the best course to get him back on the floor.

Griffin entered the 2021-22 campaign on the hot seat, with the young Pelicans failing to make the strides most expected last season, leading to the one-and-done tenure of Stan Van Gundy. Green is the third coach of Griffin's tenure, and he'll likely be the last if the team does not start having more success.

The Pelicans have gotten off to a 1-3 start with Williamson out of the lineup. 

The New Orleans Pelicans will be without star forward Zion Williamson for Wednesday's season opener against the Philadelphia 76ers, but it's likely that the 2019 No. 1 overall pick is out for much longer.

Williamson is recovering from a foot injury that required offseason surgery. During an appearance on SportsCenter, ESPN's Brian Windhorst reported that Williamson is without a firm timetable for getting back onto the court.

"No time soon," Windhorst said when asked about when Williamson might return. "The Pelicans are being very careful not to mention any timeline, but he is a few weeks away from getting reevaluated."

Windhorst went on to explain that New Orleans is moving slowly on Williamson's recovery to avoid aggravating his foot injury. Williamson also needs to get back into proper playing shape before he returns.

"He is not doing any kind of significant on-court work; he's just begun starting to run again doing one-on-zero individual workouts," Windhorst said. "I would say that it's likely weeks away. They obviously are gonna be very cautious, not only because of his foot, but because of his conditioning."

The 21-year-old Williamson is considered one of the most promising young talents in the NBA. He became the fourth-youngest player ever to be selected to an All-Star Game last season. In two seasons, Williamson has career averages of 25.7 points and 7.0 rebounds on 60.4 percent shooting from the field.

But Williamson has had trouble remaining on the court. He missed the first three months of his rookie season after suffering a torn meniscus. He sat out 11 games last season with toe and finger injuries. Windhorst said the Pelicans are becoming too familiar with Williamson not being on the court.

"The Pelicans are gonna start without Zion, but the problem is, they've been used to this," Windhorst said. "He's only played in about 50 percent of the games in the last couple years anyway." 

The New Orleans Pelicans and Jonas Valanciunas agreed to a two-year, $30.1 million extension Wednesday, according to ESPN's Andrew Lopez.

The veteran center is signed for $14 million this season, and his new contract will go into effect in the 2022-23 campaign. This is his first year with the Pelicans, who acquired him from the Memphis Grizzlies as part of a three-team trade.

ESPN's Bobby Marks provided context about the financial particulars:

The two year $14.7M and $15.4M extension was the maximum that New Orleans could offer right now.

Valanciunas was traded in the offseason and the most he could sign for was a total of three seasons (including what was left on his contract) and a 5% raise. https://t.co/RpANzsodDZ

— Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) October 20, 2021

Valanciunas averaged 17.1 points, 12.5 rebounds and 0.9 blocks with Memphis in 2020-21. He also provided some floor-spacing, hitting 21 three-pointers and knocking down 36.8 percent of his long-range opportunities.

The six playoffs trips he made with the Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors should also be beneficial to a franchise looking to make a breakthrough.

Quote from David Griffin on the Devonte’ Graham, Jonas Valanciunas additions in the Pels release pic.twitter.com/5LgL8jrwg1

— Will Guillory (@WillGuillory) August 7, 2021

By hammering out extension terms now, the Pelicans avoid a possible bidding war for Valanciunas next offseason. A $15 million annual salary should be solid value too.

The 29-year-old, meanwhile, is getting long-term security. Free agency can be unforgiving for older big men, so there was no guarantee he'd get the kind of contract the Pels offered. Andre Drummond is a two-time All-Star and four-time rebounding champion, and he settled for the veteran minimum with the Philadelphia 76ers in August.

This may not provide much certainty about Valanciunas' future in New Orleans, though.

The Pelicans handed Steven Adams a two-year deal last November after his trade from the Oklahoma City Thunder, but they moved him to the Grizzlies as part of the Valanciunas trade.

Zion Williamson is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent in 2024, and nothing looms larger for the organization than his commitment beyond that. If the front office has any reservations about Valanciunas' fit in the frontcourt, then it may have to consider yet another center option to pair with Williamson inside.

As news of Zion Williamson's latest injury setback trickled out of New Orleans last week, league personnel once again began to speculate on the looming 2022 extension talks between the New Orleans Pelicans and their 2019 No. 1 draft choice. 

This is not to say Williamson already has one foot out the door. No top pick in league history has chosen the qualifying offer with a one-year path to unrestricted free agency, versus a maximum contract extension projected to eclipse $200 million over five years. Yet this is how the modern NBA world turns. Front offices are as forthright as ever about scheming to land an alpha like Williamson from a downtrodden rival, and player movement has become equally as fluid. 

It's hard not to see the early parallels between Williamson's status in New Orleans and that of Ben Simmons in Philadelphia, where there were once nearly identical rumors about the 2016 top pick potentially taking his own qualifying offer to reach the open market. Simmons eventually accepted Philadelphia's contract and $177 million that same summer New Orleans selected Williamson, but that has meant nothing throughout this ongoing trade-demand saga.

Until Williamson puts pen to paper in July, rival front offices will hope and prepare for the possibility of a Zion free-agency frenzy come 2024. And even if Williamson does re-sign, teams will keep a radar trained onto New Orleans in hopes he seeks a trade like Simmons, just as Chris Paul and Anthony Davis did in NOLA before him. 

This is the ever-important backdrop behind last Thursday's news that Williamson won't appear in New Orleans' season opener Wednesday against Philadelphia, as part of a two-week-plus setback in his return from offseason foot surgery. There's a strong belief in league circles that the Pelicans were unaware of that procedure until Williamson reported to New Orleans ahead of media day, although one team source contacted by B/R maintained the Pelicans and Williamson were aligned on the injury's timeline. 

Before Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin addressed reporters last Thursday, word was already circling around the league that Williamson was unlikely to make his 2021-22 debut before November, at the earliest. It was even known in rival front offices that Griffin planned to speak on the matter rather than issue a press release. This all comes after league figures raised a collective eyebrow when Griffin blamed Williamson's season-ending finger injury on poor officiating.

There's an expectation that Williamson will resume play under a minutes restriction when he does take the floor, sources said, typical for stars returning from injury. But with Williamson, who bristled at the training wheels Pelicans officials placed on his reintegration from a torn meniscus injury as a rookie, it could be a higher-stakes game of poker. 

It all seems fair to wonder what kind of urgency New Orleans and Williamson will feel around his return. The Pelicans harbor plans for a playoff push, something Williamson himself strongly noted in early October, while the Williamson camp has at times held a tenuous relationship with Griffin, from the aforementioned 2019 reintegration plan to the fraught hiring of Stan Van Gundy.  

This now marks the second time in three seasons Williamson will miss the Pelicans' opening stretch because of injury. He's been hampered with knee and foot maladies dating back to his time as a Blue Devil. 

And for all of his apparent gripes about New Orleans' abundance of caution with his health, the combination of Williamson's injury history and his fluctuating weight throughout his early career would concern any front office, especially a small-market nucleus so invested in his long-term availability to the franchise. The risk of reinjury is always too real and far too treacherous. 

"I do think there is another gear that I can reach regarding my weight and conditioning," Williamson told The Old Man & the Three podcast in March. "But I think it's like you said, it's finding it. Because I don't want to get to a spot where I'm like, ‘Yeah I lost a lot of weight, but I don't feel strong. I can't do certain things I would do before.' I think it's just finding it. I do think there is another gear I can reach regarding both weight and conditioning."

He's since reached north of 300 pounds this offseason, sources said, again fueling concerns among New Orleans staffers similar to the months leading up to his rookie debut. When he joined the Pelicans' recent preseason trip to Minnesota, several league personnel on hand were struck by his heavier appearance than his listed playing weight last season of 284 pounds. "I know Zion at 280, and he was not 280," said one observer. 

"These are the injuries you have to be the most concerned about, a foot injury for a guy with noted weight issues," said one Western Conference executive. 

While Williamson did board that flight to Minneapolis, he did not attend preseason road trips to Chicago or Utah, sources said. This after a summer in which Williamson backed out of plans to accompany general manager Trajan Langdon and fellow All-Star Brandon Ingram in Phoenix to attend a Suns playoff game. 

Although, according to one team source, Williamson skipped those Chicago and Utah trips to stay back in New Orleans with the team's medical staff and instead focus on his rehab with a strength coach.  

All this has occurred before a regular-season game has even tipped. When it comes to harmony within NBA teams, context is everything. Winning has proved time and again to be the magical elixir that can squash or excuse any sign of strife within a franchise. And again, no player has ever turned down such a lucrative rookie extension that Williamson will surely qualify for and New Orleans will surely offer. On media day, Williamson did say it was "all love" between him and Griffin.

If Williamson can return at full force and lead New Orleans into the playoffs, the Pelicans could build momentum toward the future, just as the No. 2 pick from his class, Ja Morant, has done in Memphis. The electric point guard seems all but destined to re-sign with the Grizzlies next summer. League observers far and wide are still wondering whether Williamson will do the same.

Jake Fischer covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is the author of Built to Lose: How the NBA's Tanking Era Changed the League Forever.

 

New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson is going to miss the start of the regular season after having surgery on his foot. 

David Griffin, Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations, announced on Thursday the All-Star forward has no timetable to return and will be reevaluated in two weeks. 

During Pelicans media day on Sept. 27, Griffin told reporters that Williamson had offseason surgery to repair a fractured fifth metatarsal bone in his right foot.

"He had a fractured right foot that was repaired surgically," Griffin said. "His timeline should get him back on the court in time for the regular season. That would be our hope and our view. And we're very optimistic about what that looks like."

Any injury to the 21-year-old is sure to cause some worry considering he didn't even make his debut as a rookie in 2019-20 until January because of concerns about his health. He appeared in 24 games that season but was still selected to the All-Rookie first team.

The Duke product was even more dominant in his second season and made his first career All-Star Game while averaging 27.0 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game and shooting a league-leading 61.1 percent from the field.

Williamson is the team's most important player for this season and the future, so the Pelicans will want to ensure he is fully ready to go when it comes to returning from any setback.

With Williamson sidelined, look for the combination of Naji Marshall, Jaxson Hayes and Willy Hernangomez to see more playing time.

The Pelicans open the regular season on Oct. 20 against the Philadelphia 76ers.