The New Orleans Pelicans quietly ended the Zion Williamson era in this 2024-25 NBA season. It closed the way it began, marred by injury. Ultimately though, his time as the face of the franchise was only partly shut down by his own unavailability. The Pelicans lost practically their entire roster to injuries in the early season and had their playoff hopes dashed just a quarter of the way into the year.
Seemingly fed up with the repeated absences and failures, the New Orleans brass made all of their veteran players available for trade ahead of the February deadline and have even reportedly been shopping their stars including Zion, Brandon Ingram, and CJ McCollum.
While it makes perfect sense why the Pelicans might be looking to trade Zion this season, it just doesn't feel like something that'll happen — a sentiment reflected by the lack of buzz surrounding his rumored availability. New Orleans has the opportunity to add a top draft pick this summer next to Zion while further building around him using whatever pieces they get back from trading BI and CJ, which could enable them to put a roster around Big Z that actually highlights his strengths and covers for his weaknesses. It might be a major mistake for the Pelicans to trade Zion this season before they see what they can do to maximize him moving forward. If his reported trade value is true, then it would definitely be a mistake.
NBA executive predicts a shockingly low return for the Pelicans in a Zion Williamson trade
Zion has missed the majority of this season with a strained hamstring. It's held him out significantly longer than that injury's typical timeline, leading him to only have six games played under his belt this year. Between his unavailability and his poor performance to start the season, it seems that the NBA world has already forgotten about how great Big Z can be when he's fully operational.
There has been a lot of nonsense surrounding Zion this season, even more than usual. First, pundits were earnestly suggesting that the Pelicans could waive Williamson to take advantage of his non-guaranteed contract. Recently, ESPN spoke to several league executives and reported that one of them hypothesized that the Pelicans could be best off trading Z as a contract instead of as an on-court asset, positing that his non-guaranteed contract might be his most valuable quality to other teams and that a team in salary-cap trouble might trade for him purely for financial relief and waive him.
That was obviously ludicrous. In the same piece, though, a different executive estimated Zion's currently trade value and it wasn't pretty:
"An executive for another team speculated that the market for Williamson at this point would be a late first-round pick and salary filler for a good team willing to gamble that he could vault it into contender status."
If this is remotely true, there's absolutely no reason why the Pelicans should trade Zion this season. They'd be much better off trying to build a new supporting cast around him, even if it's only to boost his trade stock for a future deal. Dealing an otherworldly talent like Zion for "a late first-round pick and salary filler" would be organizational malpractice of the highest order.