Could Pelicans’ Handling Of Zion Williamson Cost Alvin Gentry His Job?

With a New Orleans Pelicans loss to the San Antonio Spurs and a Portland Trailblazers win over Philadelphia on Sunday, Zion Williamson and the Pels would be eliminated from playoff contention at the NBA’s Orlando bubble. This comes a day after ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski speculated on New Orleans head coach Alvin Gentry’s job status in a larger story on bubble questions.

“Executive VP David Griffin and Pelicans ownership have a decision to make with a year left on Gentry’s contract, sources said.”

Now that doesn’t really say one way or the other, but it does leave open the possibility that Griffin could fire Gentry even though so much of this Pelicans season was out of his control. New Orleans started 6-22 without Williamson in the lineup before roaring back to be one of the 22 teams invited down to Orlando for the restart.

As we all know, the biggest storyline with the Pelicans has been Zion and his supernatural abilities on the court paired with first time All-Star Brandon Ingram. But with Williamson on a minutes restriction due to various injuries, NOLA is only 2-3 in the seeding games thus far, with one win coming with Zion out. He’s averaged just 19.1 minutes per game, 16.8 points, 3.5 rebounds and two assists per game on 58.3% shooting.

It must be tough for Gentry to not just put Williamson in for longer stretches, but perhaps he could’ve divvied up those minutes better to have Zion in towards the end of close games? But maybe in that case, the games wouldn’t have been as close without those earlier Zion minutes. Is this an issue that should really cost Gentry his job?

Williamson didn’t make his NBA regular season debut until Jan. 22, a long wait for the most hyped pro prospect we’ve seen since LeBron James. Zion is someone who we saw make dazzling dunks and incredible highlight reel plays at Duke, with a body built for football, not hoops. New Orleans has spent considerable time getting Zion’s body and conditioning better so he doesn’t have an recurrence of his injury issues, and he’s being treated very delicately even if it costs the Pelicans a playoff berth this season.

Williamson’s situation reminds me of a similar super-hyped prospect out of San Diego State named Stephen Strasburg, who also began his career with the Washington Nationals by being treated with kid gloves. After a phenomenal debut in June 2010, Strasburg required Tommy John surgery that cost him roughly a year of action. During his first full season in 2012, the Nationals shut Strasburg down during a September pennant race with a 19-9 record instead of allowing him to compete in the team’s first ever postseason appearance in D.C.

The media and baseball world was irate, similarly to how New Orleans initially was when the bubble began and Williamson was still on a minutes restriction. Strasburg’s Nationals lost in the first round of the playoffs in 2012, and of course won the World Series last year with Strasburg playing a huge role and then receiving a mammoth contract extension.

After shutting Strasburg down in 2012, highly respected manager Davey Johnson lasted just one more season in 2013 before being fired. What will be highly respected Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry’s fate after a likely missed playoff appearance that was largely out of his control?

Will Zion Williamson’s circumstances cost Gentry his job, or will Griffin elect to hire a head coach who didn’t predate his tenure as an executive like former Cleveland Cavaliers colleague Ty Lue, or someone like Jason Kidd, as Wojnarowski suggested. Would Gentry’s ouster be fair? Perhaps not, but that’s the pressure teams face when they have a once-in-a-generation prospect like a Stephen Strasburg, LeBron James or Zion Williamson.