Zion Williamson Returning for Pelicans After Two-Month Injury Absence

Two-time New Orleans Pelicans All-Star power forward Zion Williamson is set to make his return from a two-month injury absence.

A left hamstring strain has kept the 6-foot-6 superstar big man on the shelf since a Nov. 6 defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

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Per NBA insider Marc Stein, Williamson will suit up for just his seventh game of the season on Tuesday night, against the 18-17 Minnesota Timberwolves in New Orleans' Smoothie King Center.

At 7-29 on the season, New Orleans occupies the bottom seed, No. 15, in the Western Conference this season. The club is pretty much out of the playoff race already, not even halfway into 2024-25, thanks in part to the prolonged sidelining of Williamson.

New Orleans has actually played well recently, winning its last two contests. But the Pelicans still have so much ground to recover if they want to get back into the play-in conversation that they seem more or less doomed.

The West's No. 10 seed, the San Antonio Spurs, is currently 18-18 on the year. Assuming that a .500 record is what will be needed to notch a play-in berth this season, the Pelicans would need to go 34-12 the rest of the way this year to get to even that level. That's a tall task, especially for a New Orleans club that has struggled with injuries to lots of its players this season, not just Williamson, and has had some major chemistry issues with its available players.

Williams has only appeared in 190 contests over his five-and-a-half pro seasons in the NBA due to injury issues.

Hamstring problems, specifically, have been pestering Williamson since 2022-23, as ESPN's Tim MacMahon observes. After missing the entirety of 2021-22, Williamson missed the last 45 contests of the 2022-23 season with a hamstring strain, while he departed a play-in tournament game and the then-49-33 Pelicans' entire first-round playoff loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder last year due to a strained hamstring.

This year, Williamson had gotten off to a robust individual start through his first six games in October and November.

Across those contests, the 24-year-old Duke product logged impressive averages of 22.7 points on .452/.333/.667 shooting splits, 8.0 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 1.2 blocks and 0.7 steals a night. But there's certainly no guarantee Williamson will be available for the long haul the rest of the way this year. He has appeared in 29 or fewer games across three of his five completed seasons, and at best this year he'll be able to suit up for, maximally, 52 bouts.

New Orleans will need Williamson at his best down the NBA season's home stretch if it has any hope at all of advancing to the postseason this year.

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