New Orleans Pelicans: Does Zion have a chance at Rookie of the Year?
By Eliot Clough
3. How the league restructures the rest of the season
This is the million-dollar question at the moment: how and when will the league resume play? There’s no way to tell. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, we were told the NBA would be suspended for 30 days minimum.
Mark Cuban believes things will get back to normal in mid-May and David Griffin added that he sees it likely starting up again in June or July. And now, with the U.S. becoming the world leader in cases of the disease, there’s no way to tell how this will all shake out, basketball being factored in or not.
A strong possibility at the moment would be to shorten the remainder of the regular season. The Pelicans currently have 18 games remaining on their schedule, and if the league can squeak out the entire remainder of the season, one has to believe Zion’s chances of winning the award sky-rocket. Especially if the Duke product can continue to play at the pace he has and bully grown men in the post.
As stated previously, Williamson is putting up 23.6 points per game. If he continues at that rate for the remaining 18 games, he’ll average the most by a rookie since Blake Griffin averaged 22.5 points per contest in 2011 and won Rookie of the Year. It’d be difficult to ignore that type of consistent performance over nearly 40 games.