OKC Thunder: How the Pelicans Fared Without Zion Williamson this Season

The Oklahoma City Thunder will play the New Orleans Pelicans without Zion Williamson, at least to start the first round of the NBA Playoffs, how have the Pelicans fared without their leading star?

Mar 26, 2024; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson (1) reacts / Matthew Hinton-USA TODAY Sports

Bad luck and what-ifs can perfectly describe Zion Williamson's NBA career to this point. When the New Orleans Pelicans selected the Duke Star first overall in the 2019 NBA Draft, the sales team jumped with glee - literally - While Williamson has sold tickets, he has only played in 184 career games to this point.

However, this season, things clicked for the breathtaking athlete playing in a career-high 70 games for the Pelicans en route to a 49-win season. Though, the Pelicans were only able to capture a play-in bid in the wild Western conference when disaster struck again.

Having the best game of his career to date, Williamson was forced to leave Tuesday's play-in game against the Los Angeles Lakers early with a hamstring injury. The Pelicans went on to lose that game and announced the 23-year-old will be re-evaluated in two weeks.

Despite being counted out, the Pelicans were able to knock off the Sacramento Kings on Friday to advance to the NBA Playoffs serving as the No. 8 seed out West primed to play the youngest No. 1 seed of all time in Oklahoma City.

This injury will sideline Williamson until at least Game 5 of the series and see New Orleans battle the top seed out West in the Playoffs without their best player for the second time in four seasons. In 2022 the Pelicans were ousted by the Suns in six games and dropped game 1 by 11 points.

In 12 games without the forward this season, New Orleans has turned in a 7-5 record, though three of those wins have come against the lowly Wizards, Pistons and Blazers. The Pelicans also beat up on a Cleveland team without Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland or Evan Mobley and a Mavericks team without Luka Doncic in that span before beating the Kings on Friday.

Mixed in those five losses was a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Bricktown boys held the Bourbon Street ballers to just 83 points which was a trend without Williamson.

In four of the five losses, New Orleans struggled to crack triple-digits with even one of their seven wins featuring a game where they only mustered up 93 points. Six of those 12 games featured 15-plus turnovers with all but two of them featuring double-digit giveaways.

Missing out on Williamson will be huge for the Pelicans in the playoffs. Not only do you lose a go-to scorer with not many options to replace him, but the game-changing plays he can provide on both ends. New Orleans will need someone to step up in his absence and a body to fill a spot in the playoff rotation that likely would not have seen much time otherwise on the postseason stage.

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