Zion Williamson performed a career-high 70 video games final season and confirmed as much as this yr’s coaching camp in his greatest bodily situation as a professional. The expectation was for the Duke alum to lastly shed the “injury-prone” label that has plagued his younger profession and lead the Pelicans again to prominence.
In an unlucky flip of occasions, the Pelicans introduced Williamson suffered a hamstring strain final week, simply six video games into his new season. The report instantly raised pink flags since Williamson missed 53 video games attributable to a hamstring pressure within the 2022-23 season and handled a hamstring harm throughout last year’s playoffs. Not like a number of gamers who’ve returned from in-season hamstring accidents, Williamson’s 280-pound physique hasn’t responded effectively to therapies, inflicting him to overlook prolonged intervals for an harm not deemed catastrophic in NBA circles.
As such, it should not shock anybody if Williamson misses a major chunk of the 2024-25 season. To that finish, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Monday that the Pelicans count on their franchise star to overlook a minimal of a month of motion.
“The Pelicans are bracing for him to be out about 4 to 6 weeks,” Charania told NBA Today. “His return can be based mostly on rehab and the way that therapy goes on that hamstring pressure.”
Charania famous that the Pelicans particularly used the phrase “indefinitely” whereas saying the timeline for Williamson’s absence attributable to his earlier historical past with the harm.