I'm kicking off a new segment on NBALord.com that I hope people will find entertaining and informative. The NBA Draft is an area I would like to explore more on here. Especially since I already do a lot of prospect evaluations for NBADraft.net and also recruiting coverage covering Cal basketball for Rivals.com. With that said as a brief intro into this new segment, what better way for me to kick things off than some discussion on Zion Williamson?
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know who Zion Williamson is. I really shouldn't need to tell you who the Duke superstar freshman is. He's been all over ESPN and Sports Center for the past nine months and is projected by virtually every NBA Draft expert to go #1 overall in the upcoming draft.
The only "drama" in the whole thing is will he spurn the New Orleans Pelicans and return to school in hopes of landing with a better market. While none of us expected the Pelicans to win the lottery, they won it fair and square and deserve the chance to draft Williamson, making him their main franchise piece for the future. Don't get me wrong. If I was Williamson, I would have also been hoping for Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles. But the downside of going to New Orleans instead doesn't outweigh the risk of returning to school for another year (remember his shoe blowing up?)
Furthermore, while New Orleans isn't as exciting of a landing spot as those major markets are, it's also a better landing spot from a pure basketball standpoint: David Griffin is a well respected basketball executive leading the front office while Anthony Davis is also there as one of the top players in the NBA. Putting aside the drama surrounding Davis and his future, assuming Griffin can convince "The Brow" to stay in New Orleans, the Pelicans could really be cooking with gas should they draft Williamson. They could be looking at a playoff appearance next season and before long find themselves competing with the Trail Blazers, Nuggets, and Warriors to come out of the Western Conference.
If Williamson were to return to school, he would have nothing to gain other than possibly going to a better city in 2020. On the flip side, he would risk injury, not developing his game as well as NBA scouts would hope, and perhaps even going to a worse situation than New Orleans (E.g. Cleveland). It would be a stupid move to return to Duke and even he knows it.
As much as New Orleans may not excite him, Zion Williamson should be excited about the chance to put on a Pelicans uniform. He'll get a chance to convince Anthony Davis to stay and help put a relatively new NBA franchise on the map. All in all, it's actually a pretty good spot for him.
To connect with NBA Lord on Twitter, click here.
To connect with NBA Lord on Facebook, click here.
To connect with Ben Parker, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment