Report: There’s ‘An Eye Being Kept’ On Whether Zion Williamson Becomes Available Ahead Of The NBA Draft

The 2023 NBA Draft is next week, and unsurprisingly, there seem to be an endless supply of rumors about players, picks, and whatever else that could shake up the order of things beyond the San Antonio Spurs picking Victor Wembanyama first overall. In recent days, one of the more prominent rumors is that the New Orleans Pelicans are willing to make a big move up the board in an effort to bring in G League Ignite guard Scoot Henderson.

The Pelicans are able to put together quite the package of picks, as they have a number in their war chest of assets from the trades that sent Anthony Davis to the Los Angeles Lakers and Jrue Holiday to the Milwaukee Bucks. But according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst on Wednesday’s edition of Get Up!, folks around the league wonder if New Orleans may be willing to put its former No. 1 overall pick on the table in an effort to catapult themselves to the top of the draft.

“It makes you not take too far of a leap to wonder, and the league is certainly wondering, if the Pelicans are gonna make, for the first time truly, Zion Williamson available ahead of next week’s draft,” Windhorst said. “To get up to that level in the top-5, you have to consider a player of this caliber, who’s obviously had injury history, a little bit of offseason drama recently. So, don’t know if anything’s gonna truly develop there, but I think it’s fair to say based on my conversations, there’s an eye being kept towards whether the Pelicans would make Zion Williamson available ahead of trying to get into that top end of the draft.”

It would, obviously, be a gigantic development if the Pelicans were to put Williamson on the table in trade talks, but it’s worth mentioning that there hasn’t been any clear indication they have done that. For how excellent Williamson has been when he’s gotten on the floor during his NBA career, he’s only been able to appear in 114 games across four seasons due to injury issues, which included only 29 games this past season.