The Pelicans will need to adjust to life without Zion Williamson again for the foreseeable future.
Williamson, their star forward, will be sidelined indefinitely — with no concrete timeline for when he could be re-evaluated — with a left hamstring strain, the team announced, after imaging Saturday made the injury reality clear.
He’d already missed four of the Pelicans’ opening 10 games this season, including three of their last four entering Monday’s matchup against the Nets.
Williamson didn’t play during New Orleans’ loss to the Magic on Friday due to tightness in his left hamstring, just two days after collecting 29 points and eight rebounds when the Pelicans fell to Cleveland.
But he didn’t play in their two games leading up to the Cavaliers loss due to a hamstring and quad injury, though head coach Willie Green told reporters at the time that he wasn’t certain about how that injury occurred.
“He showed up [Sunday], said he felt a little something,” Green told reporters Monday, according to Sports Illustrated. “We wanted to make sure we got a look at it.”
Williams has struggled with injuries throughout his NBA career, only appearing in 60 games in just two of his six seasons and missing all of the 2021-22 campaign due to injury.
Last year, though, he logged 70 games in the regular season, but he strained that same left hamstring during the Pelicans’ play-in game against the Lakers and proceeded to miss all first games of their first-round series against the Thunder.
But after missing the season opener due to an illness, Williamson had flashed his potential with a pair of games with 30-plus points and the 29-point outing Wednesday.
The Pelicans, after falling in the opening round of the playoffs last year, have struggled to replicate that success so far, starting just 3-7 and already missing Dejounte Murray, Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones and CJ McCollum from their lineup.
They’re already 14th in the Western Conference — with plenty of games left, though — ahead of just the one-win Jazz, and without Williamson, and with all of their other injury worries not even a quarter of the way through the season, New Orleans’ trajectory could only worsen.
