Following reports that Zion Williamson could potentially be traded away from New Orleans, his deteriorating relationship with his teammates has now been brought to light.
Where things stand between the organization, Zion and his teammates is not ideal, NBA Insider Brian Windhorst reports.
“From what I’ve been told, Zion has not been around the team much so far this summer,” Windhorst said on ESPN’s Get Up. “But that is not different from the way he’s operated in the past—that he hasn’t made it a priority to be around the team as much. He’s sort of worked out on his own. What I’d say is that there’s definitely not the type of relationship that you’d like to have between a star player and a team here. And also, he doesn’t have as strong of relationships with his teammates, from what I am told, as you’d like to see. Now, that’s not a prerequisite for success, but as you look to try to build bonds moving forward that is something to consider.”
The Pels are reportedly interested in drafting projected number two / three pick Scoot Henderson in upcoming draft, Insider Shams Charania reported.
So they would need to move a player like Zion or Brandon Ingram to get him.
NOLA “would indeed consider” trading Williamson if it meant they could potential land Scoot in the draft, NBA insider Marc Stein reported on Wednesday.
Zion has his hands full dealing with a pregnant girlfriend, which he announced to the world last week.
Not only that, he had an only fans model and ex-pornstar he was paying who found out about the pregnancy and unleashed hell on Twitter.
Apparently, paying side pieces is a pretty common practice in the league, Former NBA Champion Andrew Bogut explained on his podcast this week.
“Unfortunately, the stupidity of that is that tap cannot get turned off… Once you’re paying a girl or a man — this could go either way these days — to be your side piece, the moment you stop paying that side piece your wife’s going to find out about it. That’s just the way the world works,” Bogut said on the Rogue Bogues podcast.
“So the moment you’re like, ‘Holy sh*t, I’ve retired, I can’t keep paying you 20K a month to be my side piece cause I can’t afford it anymore,’ that’s going to go public. That’s just the reality of the world. I saw it mainly in silence in the NBA, some people that I played with and against that were paying people off and what not and this and that, it’s normal, bro, I have to say it’s normal.”