The biggest story next season for the New Orleans Pelicans will be the return of Zion Williamson, who missed all of last season with a foot injury.
Zion hopes to come back even better and looks to be taking the necessary steps to get himself into shape and be 100 percent ready to go.
In a recent interview with Zion’s personal chef, Christian Green, I asked the celebrity chef to give me one bold prediction about Zion for the season and he simply answered, “MVP,” and pretty much dropped the mic.
It was a bold prediction indeed, especially when you consider how many games he’s played so far in his short career. Zion will certainly be a long shot to win MVP next season, but it did make me wonder if there is a realistic path for him to get there.
It’s not going to be easy, but I do think Zion Williamson could win MVP next season if everything falls into place.
New Orleans Pelicans: How Zion Williamson can win MVP
Stay Healthy
The first and most obvious is that Zion Williamson has to stay on the court for the full season. The most he’s ever played in a season is 61 games, and that won’t be enough to be in the MVP discussion.
If you look at the top-5 MVP voting for 2022, which included Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Devin Booker and Luka Doncic, all of them played at least 65 games with the winner Jokic playing 74 games.
Clearly the days of the top guys playing 82 games are over, but you still have to be out there for most of them to have a chance at the MVP.
The cutoff for real consideration seems to be about 65 games as guys like Ja Morant and Stephen Curry were frontrunners until injuries kept them out of too many games.
Zion looks trim and fit right now, but none of that matters until we see him on the court for 65+ games next season, which is the only way he has any chance at all to be considered for MVP.
New Orleans Pelicans: How Zion Williamson can win MVP
Lead the league in scoring
Since Zion won’t go into next season as one of the frontrunners for MVP, he’s going to have to do even more than the top guys to work his way into the discussion.
All of the top-5 MVP candidates from this season finished in the top-10 in scoring, which you would expect. Embiid ended up leading the NBA at just over 30 points per game, which I think is realistic for Zion Williamson if he can stay healthy.
Zion scored 27 points per game in his second season, so it’s not a stretch to think he can bump that up with a better team around him and more offensive weapons in his arsenal.
The only issue holding him back here (aside from the obvious injury problems) is that the Pels now have CJ McCollum and Brandon Ingram has taken over the role of lead scorer. The ball could be spread around more than it was when Zion was running the point and doing whatever he wanted on offense.
Willie Green employs more of a team concept, so may ask Zion to defer more, spread the ball around and make their offense really difficult to stop.
If that leads to more assists and fewer points, that would be good for Williamson too, but he still has to finish near the top of the league in scoring to have a chance at MVP.
But it’s going to take more than individual success to get Zion Williamson MVP votes.
New Orleans Pelicans: How Zion Williamson can win MVP
Finish in the top-4 in the Western Conference
All of the MVP candidates were on good teams that made the playoffs last season without having to go through the play-in tournament.
If the Pels are hovering around the same place they were last season, it probably won’t matter what Zion Williamson does. The only reason Jokic won MVP as a 6th seed is that he carried them there himself with a bad team that had all of its other top guys injured.
That hopefully won’t be the case with the New Orleans Pelicans, so for Zion to get any consideration, he has to take the team to the next level, which means finishing in the top-4 and being considered a contender to win the West.
If Zion is healthy and the Pelicans make a big leap as a team, he’ll be seen as the primary reason in the eyes of voters, and the Pels will be getting a lot more attention in the national media.
Even if the Pelicans were to make the playoffs next season as an eight or nine seed, it probably won’t be enough even if Zion stays healthy all year and is near the top of the league in scoring.
It will take a combination of good health, individual domination and team success for Zion to emerge as an MVP candidate, so it’s a long shot, but definitely not impossible.