Zion Williamson can’t be franchise cornerstone for New Orleans Pelicans

Zion’s concerning injury history

Zion Williamson’s NBA career got off to a rocky start. Zion only played 24 games during his rookie season after missing the start of the season due to a knee injury. During his sophomore season, he was relatively healthy and played in 61 games. However, Zion would go on to miss his entire third season due to a foot injury.

The hope was that he would rebound this season and begin to shake the injury concerns off. That didn’t exactly happen as he’s once again projected to miss the majority of the season, this time with a hamstring injury. Even if Zion does manage to return for the final couple of weeks of the regular season, there are still big questions that need to be answered both by the team and Zion.

And the difficult part in all this is that Zion is a really good player. When he’s healthy, he’s one of the most dominating players in the NBA. The problem is, he hasn’t been healthy enough where he can truly make an impact in the league.

At this point, through four seasons, it’s impossible to say that Zion will be healthy for any extended period of time. You simply can’t say that or project that. So that’s where it becomes difficult when trying to build around someone as your franchise player.