Fact of Fiction: Zion Williamson should have a trade market

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Each week during the 2024-25 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.

[Last time on Fact or Fiction: The Suns have nowhere to go but up]

Fact of Fiction: There should be a trade market for Zion Williamson

We are only eight months removed from the last time we wondered if Zion Williamson can anchor a contender, as 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 has not played a single playoff game in six seasons. Williamson’s impact is more theoretical than actual.

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

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

When healthy Williamson has been one of the league’s most tantalizing talents. Though 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 injury list. Nobody who has averaged a 24-6-4 for his career has had so high a true shooting percentage as Williamson (62.7 TS%). Only Kevin Durant is in the ballpark.

CAREER AVERAGES OF 24-6-4, NBA HISTORY

PLAYER

PPG

RPG

APG

TS%

Zion Williamson

24.6

6.6

4.2

62.7

Kevin Durant

27.3

7.0

4.4

62.0

LeBron James

27.1

7.5

7.4

59.0

Luka Dončić

28.6

8.7

8.3

58.8

Michael Jordan

30.1

6.2

5.3

56.9

Larry Bird

24.3

10.0

6.3

56.4

Oscar Robertson

25.7

7.5

9.5

56.4

Wilt Chamberlain

30.1

22.9

4.4

54.7

Elgin Baylor

27.4

13.5

4.3

49.4

Normally this would be enough for most teams to take a flier on Williamson. The possibility of landing one of These Guys — in a league that can only be won with one of These Guys — is worth considerable injury risk, especially to a team that otherwise has no real chance of acquiring a player of that caliber.

A team…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/fact-of-fiction-zion-williamson-should-have-a-trade-market-165941316.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-10 16:59:00

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