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Zion Williamson is supposedly in the best shape of his career. So can he solve the New Orleans Pelicans’ center problem? The Pelicans’ current roster construction seems to indicate that that’s the plan. Small ball hasn’t dominated in the NBA since the breakup of the Golden State Warriors’ “Hamptons Five”. And a last gasp effort by the 2020 Houston Rockets may have put a lot of other teams off. But if someone can bring it back, it might be these Pelicans. And in an ultra-volatile Western conference, is it possible Mt. Zion could reach the mountaintop?
Can An In-Shape Zion Make Small-Ball Cool Again?
The Pelicans’ Center Problem
At this point, the New Orleans Pelicans are clearly going to enter the 2024-25 season with German veteran Daniel Theis as the only established rotation-quality center on the roster. Theis just had a nice campaign at the Olympics, where Germany narrowly missed out on a medal. But even in the Olympics, he was backed up by another known NBA quantity. Moritz Wagner may not be many people’s favorite player, but he is certainly more than the token sibling of an NBA star.
How An In-Shape Zion Could Prove The Solution
In New Orleans, Theis will be backed up primarily by rookie bigs. But the Pelicans have an extra card up their sleeve. One that’s more playable, the better shape Zion is in. It’s a twist on the Point Zion model they deployed heavily in Zion’s sophomore campaign under then head coach Stan Van Gundy. That strategy returned this past season as well under current coach Willie Green. But the twist is really more like Mike D’Antoni and Daryl Morey‘s microball experiments in Houston. That was back when the Rockets’ only center was a mostly unused, 37-year-old Tyson Chandler. Six-foot-five PJ Tucker had to guard actual NBA centers. Not just in spots, but the whole game. It was him, six-foot-eight Jeff Green, and six-foot-seen Robert Covington. That was the Rockets’ center rotation.
Of course, the Pelicans won’t need to bring back full Point Zion now that they have an actual point guard in Dejounte Murray on the team. So Zion wouldn’t need to play the roles of defensive stalwart Tucker and superstar James Harden. But those micro-Rockets had another point guard as a key component. That’s the offensive role that you could expect Zion to emulate in New Orleans. A six-foot-six version of Russell Westbrook.
A Career Year?
Westbrook might not have the same shine to his name that he once did. Naturally, he gained a lot of his current detractors from his stint with the Los Angeles Lakers. But one reason that Lakers fans derided the Westbrook trade was that microball Russ had actually looked bad in the bubble against the Lakers on their way to a title. Of course, a lot of players looked bad in the bubble. And a lot of players look bad with Anthony Davis guarding them. Davis was key to the strategy that stymied Stephen Curry in the 2023 second round.
The fact is that Westbrook was the most efficient he had ever been with the Rockets after the Clint Capela trade. Expect Zion to achieve something similar. He’ll be a secondary ball handler and slasher playing off of a lead guard with passing chops. Murray isn’t an all-time great offensive player like Harden, but the rest of the roster are upgrades at every position. There is an important caveat to all this, though.
In Shape Or Not, Even Mt. Zion Has Limits
The Pelicans absolutely cannot go all in on microball the way that Houston tried to do. All Tucker had to do on offense was go stand in the corner and hope nobody passed him the ball. He needed offensive possessions to physically recover from being all over the court on defense. The Pelicans certainly can’t use Zion that way. Even with Murray now in the fold, Zion will remain a pivotal part of the team’s offense. Not to mention that he’s been a career-long non-threat from three-point territory. Besides that very first game against the Spurs, of course.
Zion cannot play center for the majority of his minutes. It would simply be too much of a workload. Even if Zion is in the best shape of his life, and even though he showed improved defensive effort last season, it’s just too much to ask. But to close games? It’s hard to imagine the Pelicans will be fighting out many crunch time possessions with any of their actual centers on the floor. Maybe in extreme cases where they can’t afford to put Zion or someone smaller on Nikola Jokic or Joel Embiid. Even then, and especially in the case of Embiid, the Pelicans may opt to double and burn the post player with quickness at the other end.
Play The Hand You’re Dealt
It’s quite simply indisputable that none of the Pelicans’ five (even six) best players are centers. It remains to be seen whether the team will start both Murray and CJ McCollum or if McCollum will be a sixth man this season. If so, he ought to be an early favorite for Sixth Man of the Year. Meanwhile, Trey Murphy III, Brandon Ingram, and Herbert Jones are all lanky wings, but none of them have the bulk to play the role of Tucker. That leaves just Williamson, even a less notably bulky Williamson. And since, as a rule, teams want to close with their five best players on the floor, that means Williamson will be the one playing the nominal five. While Zion being lighter might sound like it would make it worse for him to play the five, what will matter more is his conditioning, and being in the best shape of his career should help with that immensely.
Even if Zion can’t really defend the most offensively mediocre NBA centers, the Pelicans might be built to survive it. If you exclude McCollum, the Pelicans can surround Zion with lengthy athleticism. The kind of players perfect for doubling, rotating, and contesting passing lanes. Securing a rebound might be a nightmare for them, but the second they do, they could leave traditional centers in the dust. Of course, the Oklahoma City Thunder just found that strategy to be wanting in their second round loss to the much larger Dallas Mavericks. So much so, they made one of the most lauded additions of the offseason in seven-footer Isaiah Hartenstein. At the very least, though, the Pelicans would certainly be entertaining to watch. That’s something that was far from universally agreed upon about that microball Houston squad.
The Last Word
The Pelicans have gone into every season in the Zion era as pretty much the same proposition—a health-dependent dark horse. If Zion really is in the best shape of his life, then that horse is going to be faster than ever. Small-ball might have fallen out of fashion for now, and with terrific new centers on the horizon, it might stay that way. But, in another nod to style-icons Westbrook and Tucker, Zion’s Pelicans are well poised to test the boundaries of fashion. They might just make small-ball cool again after all.
