The elephant in the room

[dvdman]

Anyone can see that Zion's weight issues are becoming more and more of a factor in relation to his play. It's painfully obvious to see it is
affecting his play and he cannot be out there for long periods of time. I don't see this changing and eventually his weight issues will lead
to some sort of injury. It's a shame that Willie Green's way to address this issue is playing him less and giving him rest days. There should
have been a clause put in his contract that addressed his weight and put a maximum playing weight in it.

[new city champ]

Watched tonight with buddy who is a big college basketball junkie but doesn't really follow the NBA. He was flat out shocked at Zion's appearance. Said doesn't even resemble the player he was at Duke. I couldn't argue with him. I can't see Z playing out the season at this weight and he's a diminished force when he is on the floor. This year--year 5--is a critical one for both Zion and the Pels.

[Mrakar]

I was, and i am still Zion believer, however i would now sit him for 2 months straight and make him get into shape. Its not that complicated. I lost 30 pounds in 2 months without anything remotely close to what is availible to him. Someone needs to draw the line.

[hornetsrebirth]

I don't think it can just be blamed on his weight. It didn't look like he even went hard enough to get tired. especially after listening to his post game interview I think mentally he was second guessing himself and not being aggressive enough. The visual effect was for him to look very lethargic but in the case of last night I don't think it was caused by conditioning.

[hornetsrebirth]

Watched tonight with buddy who is a big college basketball junkie but doesn't really follow the NBA. He was flat out shocked at Zion's appearance. Said doesn't even resemble the player he was at Duke. I couldn't argue with him. I can't see Z playing out the season at this weight and he's a diminished force when he is on the floor. This year--year 5--is a critical one for both Zion and the Pels.

Well back then he was a man playing against boys. He wasn't going against Lebron and AD.

[donato]

Lebron and AD are possibly his worst matchup. He doesn’t do well against long, athletic rim protectors and Lebron just waits on him to take the charge.

[6warddude]

Lebron and AD are possibly his worst matchup. He doesn’t do well against long, athletic rim protectors and Lebron just waits on him to take the charge.

i dont know how to paste videos on here but there is a video on youtube that points out what you saying....title- Lebron Disrespectfully EXPOSES Zion's Limitations

[new city champ]

Well back then he was a man playing against boys. He wasn't going against Lebron and AD.

Not that. He was commenting on his appearance and movement. I'm old enough to have seen MJ play in college and in the pros. I remember thinking when he came out "He was just a better athlete than anyone in college ball. He won't to do that to the pros." But he did. For years. Zion in college was that kind of transcendent athlete. That guy would make NBA defenders looks silly trying to guard him. Heck, even this version of Zion can do that, at times. But he's so far away from his potential physically it's like he's going half-speed a lot of times.

I said my friend, who played in college and coached for a while, was legit "shocked" by Zion's appearance last night. And he was. Here is Bill Simmons and The Ringer crew with a 10-minute break down on Zion this morning along the same lines...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdFvCjPL5DQ

[Pierre Pelican]

Lebron and AD are possibly his worst matchup. He doesn?t do well against long, athletic rim protectors and Lebron just waits on him to take the charge.

Those are precisely the type players he is getting that max contract to play against. He has been a huge disappointment and it may be time to cut our loses with him sadly. Such a waste of what would be if he had the will to go with the talent.

[PaKwAn]

Lebron and AD are possibly his worst matchup. He doesn’t do well against long, athletic rim protectors and Lebron just waits on him to take the charge.

Good thing he has added some moves against those type of matchups....

[stevemadden504]

Everybody afraid to say so I will, Zion needs to be traded. Continuously out of shape, injury prone, can't or won't expand his game. It's been time to move on from him.

[WhyHornetsWhy]

Trade Zion for Darius Garland. Play Trigga Trey at the 4

[djrnno]

I would have no problem trading Z if we get a star in return that fits with who we have . But the other elephant in the room is WG . Before I trade Z I want a REAL HC not some milquetoast weak. a lot of the time clueless gut that can't motivate a team to get up for playoff-like game. He was walking away talking to himself about the refs last night. I would fire WG and let Borrego take over for the rest of the yr. In the one game he took over they played hard and he seem to at least have some fire

[PELICANSFAN]

I would have no problem trading Z if we get a star in return that fits with who we have . But the other elephant in the room is WG . Before I trade Z I want a REAL HC not some milquetoast weak. a lot of the time clueless gut that can't motivate a team to get up for playoff-like game. He was walking away talking to himself about the refs last night. I would fire WG and let Borrego take over for the rest of the yr. In the one game he took over they played hard and he seem to at least have some fire

Listening to him mic'd up last night was very telling. He is not coaching but more yelling like a fan. To yell to a player when to dribble is laughable.

[JJackisangry]

Has Zion been a disappointment overall? I’d say yes and no. Players that deal with injury struggles the way he has tend to have this problem with stop starting in progress. Before his last injury he was absolutely incredible- now he has taken a step back. It is noticeable. In his defense he has dealt with so much in terms of scrutiny, injury and other things that it is near impossible for him to be unaffected. He is a human being that has been under the spotlight and dealing with online abuse everyday. It gets to you.

But as I have said before, the coaching staff has not helped his progress in the slightest. While I think Zion’s number one calling card should be what he does best, he simply hasn’t developed the other parts of his game. The coaching staff has repeatedly encouraged him to do what he does best and not work on his other aspects like shooting, posting up and midrange/float game. It’s always the “let the shooters handle the spacing” mantra and it has hurt him tremendously. When he was hitting that baseline J the guy was unstoppable. Why did he breakaway from that? It’s just pure ignorance from the coaching staff not to encourage him to evolve his game. He can do all these things. Zion is also responsible, but the job of a coaching staff is to reign the guys in and give them guidance. Hopefully that game was a wake up call. I’m sick of seeing Zion hesitate when teams try to stack the paint and cheese him out of the game. I want to see him evolve like he can.

[ml wave]

Has Zion been a disappointment overall? I’d say yes and no. Players that deal with injury struggles the way he has tend to have this problem with stop starting in progress. Before his last injury he was absolutely incredible- now he has taken a step back. It is noticeable. In his defense he has dealt with so much in terms of scrutiny, injury and other things that it is near impossible for him to be unaffected. He is a human being that has been under the spotlight and dealing with online abuse everyday. It gets to you.

But as I have said before, the coaching staff has not helped his progress in the slightest. While I think Zion’s number one calling card should be what he does best, he simply hasn’t developed the other parts of his game. The coaching staff has repeatedly encouraged him to do what he does best and not work on his other aspects like shooting, posting up and midrange/float game. It’s always the “let the shooters handle the spacing” mantra and it has hurt him tremendously. When he was hitting that baseline J the guy was unstoppable. Why did he breakaway from that? It’s just pure ignorance from the coaching staff not to encourage him to evolve his game. He can do all these things. Zion is also responsible, but the job of a coaching staff is to reign the guys in and give them guidance. Hopefully that game was a wake up call. I’m sick of seeing Zion hesitate when teams try to stack the paint and cheese him out of the game. I want to see him evolve like he can.

What makes you think the coaching staff is not encouraging him to evolve his game? These skills are developed in the offseason. Is Zion still using his step-father as his trainer?

[Pelicanidae]

Has Zion been a disappointment overall? I’d say yes and no. Players that deal with injury struggles the way he has tend to have this problem with stop starting in progress. Before his last injury he was absolutely incredible- now he has taken a step back. It is noticeable. In his defense he has dealt with so much in terms of scrutiny, injury and other things that it is near impossible for him to be unaffected. He is a human being that has been under the spotlight and dealing with online abuse everyday. It gets to you.

But as I have said before, the coaching staff has not helped his progress in the slightest. While I think Zion’s number one calling card should be what he does best, he simply hasn’t developed the other parts of his game. The coaching staff has repeatedly encouraged him to do what he does best and not work on his other aspects like shooting, posting up and midrange/float game. It’s always the “let the shooters handle the spacing” mantra and it has hurt him tremendously. When he was hitting that baseline J the guy was unstoppable. Why did he breakaway from that? It’s just pure ignorance from the coaching staff not to encourage him to evolve his game. He can do all these things. Zion is also responsible, but the job of a coaching staff is to reign the guys in and give them guidance. Hopefully that game was a wake up call. I’m sick of seeing Zion hesitate when teams try to stack the paint and cheese him out of the game. I want to see him evolve like he can.

The toxicity of the Zion discourse is largely why I went absentee on the forum after last game. Knew it was going to be ugly. When other players have awful games, the general consensus is that it was an outlier bad game and they need to prove themselves next time out. When Zion has a bad game, everyone's barely restrained vitriol comes out and instead of having to prove himself next time out, he's a fat useless bust who needs to retire or go to China because he's a pox on the franchise. It's pretty vicious and often very personal and it comes across as nasty rather than basketball talk.

I disagree that the coaching staff has repeated encouraged him to do what he does best and avoid working on other things like posting up. They started the season with 15 games of him being fed the ball in the post. The fact that he's not elite at that, and the fact that it's a poor play-type for team offense didn't stop them: they wanted him posting up, so he posted up a lot. I think part of the problem with Zion's development is that - other than having few actual healthy off seasons to work on things - he's yet to have a coaching staff consistently build on his game. With Gentry he was in the post a lot too, then off ball as a cutter. With SVG, he was on ball a lot and it worked really well but the team sucked and then he missed a huge amount of time. Last year, we started with him off-ball and in the post largely as a decoy, then BI went down and he was allowed to run point and it worked well until he got injured again. Then this year it's back to the post.

Imagine if, instead of letting Giannis be a giant point forward, they had spent his first 5 years of NBA development sticking him in the post and then getting confused as to why he never turned into the Greek Freak. Maybe if there was some consistent development pathway instead of trying to play him like 35 year old Lamarcus Aldridge, he'd have added more versatility? Hell, we even saw it in the last few games prior to the IST; he'd been getting a little more run on ball and the team in general was running a more pass-heavy offense and he was showing that little pullup jumper and the floater again. Not often, but it was making appearances.

It's on Zion to improve, but it's also on coaching to present the opportunities that allow for improvement, and we've had nothing consistent in that regard. It's a miracle Herb has taken the strides he has.

[HoustonRox]

Its not that complicated. I lost 30 pounds in 2 months without anything remotely close to what is availible to him.

This doesn?t even sound healthy at all. Are you ok dude?

[PELICANSFAN]

I was, and i am still Zion believer, however i would now sit him for 2 months straight and make him get into shape. Its not that complicated. I lost 30 pounds in 2 months without anything remotely close to what is availible to him. Someone needs to draw the line.

Sounds super healthy and sustainable, especially for a professional athlete....