Now the joooooy of my woooorld is in ZIIIIION — thread for Zion Williamson

Guns and Buns: A South Carolina Addiction Story pic.twitter.com/bjQBidVwci

— Hoops (@HoopMixOnly) June 7, 2023

as always, I recommend the bomani jones podcast from today

Our special boy

that was certainly a sequence. pic.twitter.com/BVojkQtjke

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) October 26, 2023

He did have some trouble with JJJ, but OK for opening night. Funny 23/7/3 on 9/17 is a mediocre night for him. Matt Ryan saved the day.

maybe the Wemby stuff will light a fire under him. can't feel good to lose the title of "everyone's favorite big boy"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9VCfb0XAAApxFO?format=jpg&name=medium

our boy does not seem to have the right mindset for nba greatness.

Zion Williamson doesn't look too happy: "I'm trying my best to buy in right now." pic.twitter.com/uyzuDRAe8M

— HoopsHype (@hoopshype) November 13, 2023

probably not but he’s also playing for a franchise that seems hell bent on never putting the right team around its no 1 overall picks

wonder what hes mad about ive watched some pelicans this year and when he was in they were running a very zion based offense

hes getting just as many shots as last year but hitting them at 50% instead of 60

he and BI dont seem like a good fit.

idk bi is a pretty all purpose kind of player

why's he breathing like that when he's just sitting there

hes mad!

idk i had serious lung problems for years and that trips my "dude see a pulmonologist" wires but when you're a hammer etc

one would think with all the medical professionals looking at that guy all the time theyd catch anything major but also maybe not

i think hes a lost cause. 23 and already on the decline in every way

Pelicans "have repeatedly stressed to [Zion] Williamson that his diet and conditioning need to improve," but the former No. 1 pick "doesn't listen," per @cclark_13 of The Times-Picayune pic.twitter.com/sl4logTLz4

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 8, 2023

weird shit

he looks idk about ~75 lbs heavier than his duke days

the dawg in him got overfed

Watching Zion in person was a different experience than watching Haliburton. Zion will get 30 in a game next week and people will say he’s fine but he isn’t. The bet that he’ll figure it out seems like the wrong side now. Tonight was brutal.

— Russillo (@ryenarussillo) December 8, 2023

many clips of him during the game standing around or just barely moving

there is also the quote from after the game where he said he was “too laid back” or something

saw a thing that said zion is back, guess he played himself into shape

Eye test says that’s not true

yeah still doesnt seem like he has that old pop but he is playing well, pelicans are running the point zion offense again which might have something to do with it, because thats a good offense

Still waiting for him to become an elite defensive player. When does that happen?

i dont think that was ever the plan

I went looking for receipts and found an opinion of mine so wrong I'm shook.

link?

i think he was expected to make insane wow splash plays on defense, blocks where he comes from out of nowhere and skies above the backboard and shit. which he did regularly at duke and has not done basically at all in the NBA. but i’m not sure ppl saw him as like a potential elite lockdown defender tho i could be misremembering

i'm sure there was some wishful thinking about his defense at the time given his ceiling as an athlete, but his body type is not one of a plus defender

I went looking for receipts and found an opinion of mine so wrong I'm shook.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Wednesday, February 21, 2024 7:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

link?

― lag∞n, Wednesday, February 21, 2024 7:35 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I might have said Simmons > Embiid. Dark times.

(hundreds of thousands of years hence, faint tremors of PBKR's opinion arrive at an advanced civilization on a far off planet sparking a global wave of madness, riots, and rapid social disintegration)

lol oh no

when keeping receipts goes wrong

in another era (and with another mentality) could have imagined zion scraping being an impact defender in the model of say charles oakley. bruiser making the paint inhospitable. but pretty clearly neither he nor nba basketball are wired that way anymore

his block and steals rates were through the roof in college, didnt really take much interest in all that in the pros tho

Yeah pretty sure people thought he’d be a menace as a help defender

i saw a full zion game last night --

i thought he looked slimmed down and pretty athletic. there were 2 or 3 times where he just jumped much higher than anyone else on the floor -- one for a block that was ruled a goaltend, another on a rebound. i think the thing is you just don't feel that athleticism throughout the game the way that you did w/ idk vintage blake griffin or something. and if you watch the duke highlights that's the kinda thing you start to picture. but he still has a lot of quickness and leaping ability relatively speaking. he got iso'd on jimmy a few times and was pretty easily able to use quickness off the dribble to get to his spot and then his elevation to just sky up and over for the shot. he had more trouble w/ bam tho who can slide his feet and jump w/ zion. the interesting thing is that for as good as he is in the paint he doesn't really dunk the ball -- he's outside the top 30 in the league in total dunks. you see him use the rapidness of his leaping ability to get floaters and other sorta hook shot, post move-y type looks in the paint.

the pels were also w/o ingram and mccollum got hurt in the second half -- the pels played the last like 6-8 mins of the game w/ zion out there w/ herb jones, trey murphy, jordan hawkins & nance, which is a sensible line up on paper: zion + a big + wing role players. but the pelicans literally could not score, i think they scored like 4 points in that stretch before garbage time. the heat were throwing zone at them and have been playing great defense lately in general, idk if those 5 guys have ever played together so i don't want to overstate it, but i do think point zion prob has a lot of strides to make w/ the actual "point" part

Yah the thing w Zion is he could be the most violent player in the league but he’s really a finesse player at his core

That Naji steal and alley 🤌 pic.twitter.com/MVrasSnAoZ

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) March 20, 2024

zion is back baby

why does whichever zeller that is look like a newborn baby

Is our sweet boy really back? I remain skeptical

dont want to jinx anything but he seems back

when i saw that video earlier i truly had to double check the date

Yeah pretty sure people thought he’d be a menace as a help defender

― infinite wiggles (Spottie), Wednesday, February 21, 2024 9:16 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

eyes emoji

pic.twitter.com/H8D92RNPTK

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) April 8, 2024

So proud of him.

Crazy but true: Last night was Zion’s first time making multiple 2-point jumpers outside 10 feet in the same game, per Second Spectrum tracking data.

It’s a shot he works on in practice all the time. Using it more in games will help when teams pack the paint against Pels’ O. pic.twitter.com/c3LmQjfoum

— Andrew Lopez (@_Andrew_Lopez) April 8, 2024