Pelicans: Predicting stats for Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram

New Orleans Pelicans: How Zion Williamson will improve his numbers

Zion Williamson had a breakout season in year two and cemented himself as the most dominant post player in the NBA.

He put up huge numbers, so will it be possible for him to improve?

One area where Zion will almost certainly improve is at the free-throw line, where I think he’ll shoot and make more of them next season.

Zion has averaged 7.4 and 8.7 attempts in his first two seasons, with accuracy of 64 and 69.8 percent, respectively.

He got hacked a lot last season and the no-calls became an issue, resulting in David Griffin ranting about the refs to the press.

The league certainly took notice and I expect Zion Williamson to get far more superstar treatment this season when it comes to calls. The NBA doesn’t want one of the future faces of the league to get hurt again, so expect Zion to live at the free-throw line.

If he continues to improve, I could see him hitting 75 percent of his free throws and getting his attempts closer to 11 per game.

With Steven Adams no longer camping in the lane, Zion should get a few more rebounds and I expect better shooting and offense to lead to more assists.

I predict a final stat line of 31 points, 8 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, which should be enough to put Zion in the race for a scoring title.

If the Pelicans improve dramatically as a team, Zion could get some MVP votes with those numbers, especially if he continues to score with historic efficiency.