Newsletter

Pelicans expect Zion Williamson to join rehearsals on Wednesday

BUENA VISTA LAKE, Fla. – Executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin said he expected Zion Williamson to join the team by Wednesday.

Williamson returned to Orlando on Friday evening after leaving the NBA bubble for eight days due to a family emergency. According to the NBA protocol, since the star pelicans rookie returned COVID-19 negative tests daily while he was away, he must quarantine for only four days while returning four other negative tests.

“In theory, his quarantine would end on Tuesday afternoon,” Griffin said on Monday. “The problem is, he has to test and get the results before releasing it.”

While Williamson was away from the team, Griffin said, the 20-year-old was able to fit into some light training sessions. Now that he is in quarantine, the championship has delivered a yoga mat and some other training equipment to his room, but “it is not as if he is capable of doing anything that favors running and jumping”. Griffin wasn’t sure if Williamson had been assigned an exercise bike.

If Williamson is available to play in the opening of the Pelicans’ reboot against Utah Jazz on July 30, it will be determined by how he feels after practicing.

“Literally any player on our roster who went 13 days without doing any physical activity, it won’t be taken for granted that we would just have freed them in the next game,” Griffin said. “Especially a player who generates as much torque as he does. So we’ll see where he is.”

Since Williamson’s departure, many other players have been granted justified absences including Patrick Beverley, Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell. Griffin said he is not worried that players leaving the bubble will significantly increase their risk of exposure to COVID-19.

“The league does a great job of being hyper-cautious when bringing players back to the bubble that I don’t really feel like our danger is here,” said Griffin. “I don’t think that’s where we have any real opportunity to pop the bubble. I think the real problem will be as this goes further and further, there is more and more attraction for a sort of breaking rank and just leaving campus? This it’s when you really see how isolated it is. “

.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending