Can Zion Williamson and Ja Morant reach their ‘potential’ after years of starts and stops?
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Zion Williamson and Ja Morant’s respective NBA teams opened training camp in the capital of country music last week; Williamson’s New Orleans Pelicans just steps from Music Row on the Belmont University campus, and Morant’s Memphis Grizzlies at an upscale, private high school about 15 miles southwest of downtown.
Williamson and Morant arrived in Nashville at almost eerily similar places in their careers, given the proximity of their childhoods (they grew up about an hour apart in South Carolina) and their lofty positions in the 2019 NBA Draft. Williamson, of course, went in June at No. 1 to the Pels, with Morant right behind him at No. 2 to Memphis.
Six seasons later, they’ve become NBA All-Stars and “stars” in the looser sense of the word, but both have endured enough issues (injuries or otherwise) that many wonder if they’ll reach their full potential as the next real player. major American basketball superstars.
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“I don’t think any of us really know his potential,” Pelicans coach Willie Green said of Williamson as the thunder of dribbling and swishing nets echoed in Belmont’s Curb Event Center on Day 1 of training camp. “We believe in him here. When he plays, he’s as dominant as anyone in the NBA.”
When answering the same question about Morant, Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins said, “It’s easy to say things like ‘the sky’s the limit,’ ‘hall of famer,’ ‘champion.’ I hope I can wish that stuff existed.
“I think he showed tremendous growth over the summer, even last year,” Jenkins said. “But I think he can be one of the greats to play this game because of how much he loves it and how much he invests in the business.
Williamson is 24 and played more games last year (70) than in any other season in the NBA, but he faced questions about his physical condition and the role it continued to play in his relative inability to stay healthy. He had been an All-Star the year before despite playing in just 29 games, and the season before that was completely lost – Williamson missed the entire event due to a lingering foot injury. His best full season in the NBA was and still is his second, when he posted career highs in points (27.0) and rebounds (7.2) per game.
Last season ended terribly and poetically for Williamson; in a Play-In Tournament game against the Los Angeles Lakers, he went for 40 points and 11 rebounds, but missed the final minutes of the eventual loss due to a hamstring injury.
The 25-year-old Morant was the runaway Rookie of the Year in 2020, while Williamson barely played (only 29 games due to injury). Injuries cost Morant in each of his five seasons, but he nevertheless emerged as a star ready for the NBA’s biggest stages in Years 3 and 4, when he was a two-time All-Star with an average of more than 25 points and almost single-handedly accelerating the Grizzlies’ rebuild.
After the 2023 All-Star Game, Morant’s career took a turn. Twice the league suspended him for brandishing a firearm on social media. Just nine games after returning from the second suspension, which covered the first two months of last season, Morant suffered a shoulder injury that required season-ending surgery and limited him to just nine games.
Neither player was part of Team USA for the Paris Olympics last summer, a 12-star team built not just to win gold (which it did), but also to pass on a torch from LeBron James , Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. next generation of American super talent.
“If they (Team USA) had called, I definitely would have answered, but I guess it wasn’t my time, and that’s OK,” Williamson said last week. “They went and went there and brought home gold, which was great for the country. Hopefully I will be ready in 2028.”
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Williamson and Morant reaching their potential isn’t really about making the next Olympic team, which will defend gold at home in Los Angeles in four years. Both players are so talented and dominant that they are obvious candidates, as long as they are healthy and otherwise in everyone’s good graces when it comes time to pick the next team. And even if they’re not in LA for the next Olympics, no country will have as deep a roster as the US team.
“We will still have a great chance to win gold, but it won’t be easy,” said a USA Basketball source. “Yes and Zion should be in the mix. Hopefully they can get and stay on track in the future.”
The reason Team USA (and the absence of Williamson and Morant from the last iteration) is now part of the discussion is that James, Curry and Durant viewed their Paris run as a “last dance.” It suggests that they will either be retired or not playing at the level necessary to be a US Olympian in 2028. So between now and then, three players who have been the very best in the NBA for a long, long time could have disappeared. from the sport, and it is unclear which of the US-born stars could succeed them.
Given the hype surrounding Williamson heading into the 2019 draft, and the buzz Morant generated in his first four seasons, they were the obvious candidates. However, after everything that has happened to both of them, you might wonder if either of them will make it this far.
“Absolutely (he can),” Williamson said. “Now I just have to do my part and show that on the field by staying healthy and making good runs in the playoffs.
“Unfortunately, injuries happen,” Williamson continued. “So like I said, I have to do my part and I won’t impose that on anyone else.”
Williamson said he, Morant and Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Team USA were the young players he believed were positioned to one day become the American leaders of their sport. Morant was given the same opportunity to answer these questions by The Athletics but curtly rejected; Memphis team spokespeople later clarified that there was a misunderstanding, and Morant simply focused on the Grizzlies.
The last American-born NBA MVP was James Harden in 2018. Over the past three years, the highest ranking an American player has achieved in MVP voting has been fourth, while foreign-born superstars Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Dončić and Joel Embiid (who coincidentally has obtained U.S. citizenship and played for Team USA last summer) have dominated the award. Victor Wembanyama of France is the reigning Rookie of the Year, and two Frenchmen – Zaccharie Risacher and Alex Sarr – took the first two spots in the 2024 NBA Draft.
Does it matter? On the one hand, the league set attendance records last season and just signed a $76 billion media deal with the most dominant (but not necessarily most popular) players from other countries.
But according to the league’s data, the top three NBA jersey sales last season belonged to three Americans (Curry, James and Jayson Tatum), even though none of them were in the top five in the MVP voting. Additionally, the Lakers (with James) played in seven of the NBA’s 10 most-watched games last season, and the Warriors (with Curry) played in four of the top 10, according to the Sports Business Journal — even though neither team was exceptionally good. Both teams ended up in the Play-In tournament and the Warriors did not advance to the playoffs.
The idea of succeeding James, Curry and Durant when they retire is not about replacing Antetokounmpo, Dončić or Wembanyama (or Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, last season’s MVP finalist), but simply about joining the ringside of the brightest NBA stars.
“Think about it with Joker (Jokić) and all those players who weren’t born in the United States, we attract fans from those places,” said CJ McCollum, another of Williamson’s teammates in New Orleans who also serves as president of the National Basketball Players Association. “We’re getting more and more players from those countries growing up watching (their born NBA stars), and it will make our game better. That is what we ultimately want. Sponsorship will come. These (foreign stars) are in Americanized commercials, they have endorsement deals in the United States and abroad.
“So I think that’s one of the cool parts of our game.”
For the American NBA players there is pride. As foreign-born players dominated recent MVP races and USA Basketball lost three of its last four games at the 2023 FIBA World Cup to finish fourth, Durant told Olympic teammates in the lead-up to Paris about the importance of mining gold as a means to win. to show the rest of the world that Americans were still at the top of the basketball world.
James is still the face of the NBA, but turns 40 in December. Curry and Durant are both 36. Of their three teams, the most is expected of Durant’s Phoenix Suns – although even they aren’t favored to be among the top two or three of the West.
All three earned their place on the mantelpiece by racking up NBA titles and MVPs, and last summer they joined forces to perhaps leave one last big mark on their legacy by winning Olympic gold (a record fourth gold for Durant; third for James; and first for Curry, who had never competed in an Olympic Games).
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Their American colleagues are aware that a void is coming.
“There are a lot of people around the league thinking about this,” said Brandon Ingram, Williamson’s teammate on the Pels and former teammate of James, who was also a member of Team USA for the 2023 World Cup. “I think it’s good for everyone who stepping into that position to take advice from the guys who came before them and see their approach to the game. It has to be someone with the personality of LeBron, the personality of Kevin Durant, the personality of Steph Curry.”
Williamson has a shoe deal with Jordan Brand and Morant is a Nike signature athlete. They’ve already earned supermax contracts and All-Star berths.
But if Team USA’s magical run to gold last summer taught us anything, it’s that there will soon be room, both in the NBA and in international play, for Williamson and Morant to do so much more.
(Illustration by Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; photos of Zion Williamson and Ja Morant: Sean Gardner, Jeff Dean / NBAE via Getty Images)
