Zion Williamson may be just three minutes away from his first playoff game. When he made a layup in the final quarter yesterday to tie the score at 95, he immediately felt discomfort in his left leg.
The timeout was still called by the Lakers, and James felt that this defense was not successful in restricting Zion, and the Lakers probably didn't notice that Zion was limping when he walked, and we didn't notice it in front of the screen.
It wasn't until the timeout that the camera suddenly showed Zion angrily throwing away the towel and walking to the players' tunnel, never returning to the game. Before leaving, Zion 40+11+5 devoured the Lakers' interior line alive. After leaving, the Pelicans took a sharp turn and eventually lost the chance to fight for seventh.
To make matters worse, the Pelicans are losing the race to the Kings for the final playoff spot. Zion's injury was eventually determined to be a left hamstring strain, and as I've said many times before, hamstring injuries are troublesome and have a long recovery time, Haliburton's form has taken a big dip because of this injury.
And Zion is sure to not play in the play-offs against the Kings and will need a few weeks to evaluate further. In other words, if Zion's Pelicans can defeat the Kings and enter the playoffs, Zion will most likely not be able to catch up.
Some time ago, when Zion was beating the Clippers, I said that Zion was about to make his first playoff game. It seems that this is too early to say. Yingge was injured unexpectedly, and the Pelicans' familiar record slipped in the closing stages, and the two losses to the Lakers were too deadly.
Yesterday's game was the first time Zion had played after the end of the regular season. Zion has been fit enough this season to play 70 regular-season games, nine more than his previous career single-season appearance.
Of course, his playing time is the lowest since his rookie season, and his shooting and efficiency have dropped slightly, and his points per game have dropped from 26 last season to 22.8 this season. The fat tiger in the first half of the season has actually been in a state of paddling.
On the one hand, he is not in good shape, and on the other hand, it may also be for the second half of the season. After the All-Star break, Zion made a push in March, playing the season high in the final game of the season and then coming to an abrupt end in the best moments.
Although all the stats have dropped, I think Zion's growth this season is clear. He still doesn't shoot three-pointers, but he shoots a lot more from the ground up than he did before, at least now he doesn't just know how to rush to the basket like a brute.
When the Pelicans need him to be at the No. 5 position, he will also play inside in a small lineup, Zion said, "It allows us to switch defenses indefinitely, and the opponent can't find our weaknesses." ”
Unfortunately, we still can't see what level Zion is in the playoffs. Of course, yesterday's play-off game was not much different in intensity than in the playoffs. Zion was humiliated after the fiasco in the previous game, bringing out all the powers of his body, and then being injured again.
So shouldn't we think about it, can Zion's body really support him to play such a high-intensity game? Zion was injured yesterday without confrontation, which means that the load on his body has reached its limit. The string couldn't hold on, and then it suddenly broke.
Despite carefully protecting his body for a season, the Fat Tiger suffered his worst injury in the most crucial battle of the season. But compared to that, I think the Pelicans should really consider whether there is a future for the current roster configuration of this team.
Yesterday, when the Fat Tigers slaughtered all sides, Ingram and CJ were off the court. These stars of the Pelicans team seem to really have no chemistry at all, and they always start to exert power after one injury.
Every year, the script is like this, with a tepid start to the season, an injury in the middle of the season to start a winning streak, and a loss of competitiveness at the end of the season for various reasons. Giving the feeling of hope and then quickly dashing hope, Pelican fans have felt too deeply in recent years.
Fat Tiger and Yingge can't do the job of organizing forwards, and CJ is a score-biased guard, so he can't do the work of organization. The Pelicans have been lacking a starter-level point guard throughout, resulting in a team-wide offense that can't be sorted out.
Herbert Jones had the best season of his career, but after all, role players can't change much. Valan is still a stable starting center, but the problem of not being able to play high-end games was a few years ago, and now it is much worse than the peak.
If I were playing 2K, the Pelicans' deformed lineup with the two-forward line as the core would have been dismantled by me a long time ago. But in the real world, dismantling the lineup is never a matter of one sentence, who should give up, who should be corrected, and whether or not to change the chips for when are all huge problems in front of the Pelicans.
Now it seems that if the overball is not injured, it is not the perfect fit for the Pelicans' guard. It's a pity, it's still an injury.