There is no doubt that New Orleans Pelicans power forward Zion Williamson is one of the brightest young talents in the NBA. However, he has had a lot of issues with his durability thus far in his career.
NBA legend Charles Barkley has criticized Zion Williamson on many occasions for being overweight, and recently, he claimed that he would love to “sit down” and mentor Zion Williamson, and noted he would tell him to “get in shape”.
“I wish Zion had a vet on on the team (or) a coach who could say, ‘Yo man, you gotta get in shape. You can’t play basketball at your weight,'” Barkley said. “… How many players have you seen eat their way out of the NBA? A lot of them!
“I wish I could sit down with Zion and say ‘Yo man, you got so much talent but you gonna have to lose some weight and get in shape because unless you get in shape, you can’t play basketball.’”
"I wish I could sit down with Zion [Williamson] and say 'yo man, you got so much talent but you gonna have to lose some weight & get in shape because unless you get in shape, you can't play basketball.'"
—Charles Barkley
(via @SiriusXMNBA)pic.twitter.com/bDwVgBVQbV
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) May 19, 2023
There’s no doubt that conditioning is important for Zion Williamson, and being overweight can definitely impact a player’s performance on the court and durability. Hopefully, we see Zion Williamson figure things out.
This year, Zion Williamson averaged 26.0 PPG, 7.0 RPG, and 4.6 APG for the New Orleans Pelicans. He is definitely an All-NBA level player when healthy, but the key is simply being able to stay on the court, as he only played 29 games this season.
CJ McCollum Previously Defended Zion Williamson Amidst Criticism
Due to his frequently being absent from the court, some people assume that Zion Williamson doesn’t actually love the sport of basketball. However, CJ McCollum pushed back against that notion, pointing out that the whole Pelicans team can improve in terms of their “approach to the game”.
“I think it’s unfair to assume that [Zion] doesn’t want to play basketball. You’re talking about a guy who loves to compete. He loves the bright lights, he loves the big moments as you could see from how we started our season — first in the West, him being a starter in the All-Star game. Can we all improve as individuals as far as our approach to the game? I absolutely believe so. There’s another step and growth that we’re all gonna go through as a team and think he’s currently going through it and understanding the importance of the little stuff…”
Hopefully, the New Orleans Pelicans manage to figure things out going forward. They are an extremely talented team as a whole, and all they need to do is simply get healthy.
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