 What's the word y'all? I'm finally back for my trip. If you didn't know I was in Atlanta for a few days, shooting some stuff that'll be coming out soon was definitely fire. And a couple weeks ago I was telling y'all that I was super excited for the preseason. And the yesterday we were waiting for our flight to get home and ESPN was on and the Charlotte Hornets were down by 50. So I just, the preseason thing is dead and I just can't wait to Tuesday so the games can finally start mattering. So I have this plan for this channel. Like I said, I'm trying to spend more time over here and try to focus on it a lot more. And the way I'm doing that is I'm waking up, I'm thinking about things I'm gonna talk about. I'm browsing through Twitter and Reddit, trying to get topics. And today I saw something going semi-virus in the NBA world. And I wanted to talk about this player in this team for a minute. And these pictures, these pictures are the reason that we're doing it today. And we're talking about Zion slash the New Orleans Pelicans. So these pictures popped up on my timeline earlier and I was a bit surprised from it. At the bottom you have 2019 Zion Williamson right after he got drafted. And then at the top you got 2021, this media day. And you can see there's a dramatic difference in his physical appearances and people were concerned. People were concerned about the way Zion Williamson looks with just a couple of days until the NBA season officially starts. And I'm here to talk about that. Did you slightly get click baited? Yeah, a little bit. I'm not necessarily overreacting to the fact that Zion looks like he put on some weight here. Because if you didn't know, he fractured his foot, y'all. He can't run, he can't jump. He can't do majority of the things that will keep your way down. Willie Green said he was doing like some water aerobics and things in the pool. So that was the best we've got for the last, for Zion Williamson for the last couple of weeks. And the guy that was drafted 6'6", 285. Yeah, if he can't run and do the things that kept him in shape, he's going to put on some weight. So I'm not looking at this picture, I'm like, ah man, Zion. But I am looking at this picture saying, oh man, Zion. See, it's the tone difference. It's the tone difference. Because they said that he is going to be reevaluated in a few weeks. Which tells me that Zion probably will not be playing for the first month of the NBA season. Because if they reevaluate him in two weeks and say, hey, the foot looks good. Good for Zion, right? Yeah, he can play again. Nah, he not in game shape, ladies and gentlemen. You'll see this picture. He's not in game shape. Even if he is cleared today, he's going to have to spend some time getting back into his version of game shape. Yeah, so he probably won't play for at least the first month of the season. And I think that's what the Pelicans fans should be preparing themselves for. I am a bit concerned about Zion. Now, Zion put together one of the most efficient statistical seasons of all time. He averaged like 27 points per game. And when he was at the rim, there was nobody that could stop him. None of the 29 teams figured out a way to stop Zion Williamson. He can go through you, around you, over you. If he missed, he was getting his own rebound. There was no way to stop this physical force at all. But through the first three years or two years of his NBA season, and now I'm going into his third, each one of these years, he suffers some type of injury that I look at it. And I'm not a physician or physical therapist or anybody in the medicine field. So take it with a grain of salt. I look at his frame and I look at his play style and say that's probably reason why he has a foot injury. He is 6628, well, he might be 66300 right now. But all of that strain on the legs, on the joints and the fact that he plays like punching people in the face, bumping into bodies. You know, it has to be some of that that's causing some of these injuries. And listen, I'm not saying that Zion's don't come back this season and he's going to be trash or he's going to be trash for 10, you know, I do believe that Zion is going to be a physical freak of nature for his entire career. When he's drafted in 2019, it was a two player draft but we knew who one was and then we knew who two was. We knew that Zion was drafted number one regardless. John Morell was making a lot of noise, upset the teams and NCAA tournament, dunking over people and stuff. But we all came back to the fact that Zion at the time was a freak of nature busting through shoes, busting through shoes, dunking on people, throwing lobs and playing defense. And that is my main concern about Zion. The fact that in these two years that we've seen of Zion, we have not got a fraction of the defensive impact that he had when he was in Duke. One of my favorite Zion Williamson clips of all time is when the guy is shooting in the corner and Zion closes out out of nowhere and spikes that thing to row 36. We haven't got that type of defensive impact from Zion Williamson yet. Now there are a few things you can say about that. You can say that, hey man, he's given so much on the offensive side of the ball, he's going to take plays off on defense. And for the most part I'll be like, okay, I understand that. But when we have players that play a similar play style to Zion that are also defensive player of the, you know who I'm talking, defensive player to your caliber players, I do not see that as an excuse anymore. I don't. I do not see it as an excuse that Zion is just, he's given so much on this end, he can't give it in on the other end. That means the boy got to get in better shape. He's got to. And we've seen, I'm going to parallel to Yannis because again, their play styles are different. I know their body types are completely different. Yannis is like six inches taller and they might want to say, I don't know. But the play types are the same. We're talking about players that are going, bang, bang, bang with you all the time. And the Bucks did a thing with Yannis, at least in the regular season, where they were playing him as Spurch twos. I was like, hey, I don't really like that, bro, I'm ready to make the playoffs. And part of me making the playoffs is me playing 36 minutes a game instead of the 32 or whatever I play. And they did that because they didn't know, they knew that Yannis was putting so much on the offensive and the defensive side of the ball that we knew that he couldn't play eight straight minutes in a row. I mean, he did once, you know, went him out of the most. But in the regular season, that was kind of the way they played with Yannis. And they're doing that for Zion right now, but he's not giving the both ends of the ball thing. You know what I'm saying? I would love for Zion. And this is one of the things that would put the Pelicans into, I already think the Pelicans are gonna be one of the most fun teams to watch because, again, Zion is on this team. Brandon Ingram is the absolute bucket. I'm a big fan of Jonas Valentunas. They have pieces around here that's gonna make them a super fun team to watch. But the thing that I believe that can elevate them to a playoff playoff team, my microphone started bugging. I started talking about Zion and Brandon Ingram at this moment in the video, sorry. Both of these players have showed throughout some form of their career that they can be positive defensive players. And they're timed together. They haven't really done that. Brandon Ingram a little bit more than Zion, but bro, Brandon Ingram, let me see if I can find these, man, Brandon Ingram. Now, this is a video I just found of Brandon Ingram, Zion Williams, some defense. Would Brandon Ingram's athleticism and his length of things, there's no way you can tell me that he can't be a Super Plus defender. Zion Williams is just pure athleticism, should be getting a ton of blocks and just playing great defense. This is just a few clips that I found on YouTube that shows the potential that these players can have. There's no reason for a team of this caliber, at least last year, to have the fifth worst defensive rating in the entire league. Brandon Ingram, Zion Williamson, Steven Adams, Lanzo Borro, y'all hit the, look at some of these plays. Offensive rebound, Zion Williamson says no to that. Nobody closed out, but that's a miss. Oh, I guess that went in. Here's another play. Brandon Ingram is using his pure length. Step in, good contest. Here's another one from Brandon. Norman Powell tried to get down heel, no thank you. Brandon Ingram's just too long of a player. If this team wants to be competitive and end up a playoff team, we need those two players to step it up dramatically on the defensive side of the ball. You gotta give it on both sides, man, you have to. Hey, but the fact is that this is a business. The NBA is a business. We didn't know that Zion broke his foot until media day. You're like, what's the significance about that? People who were becoming season ticket holders for the Pelicans didn't know that Zion was probably gonna miss the first couple of weeks or even month of the NBA season. It's a business, y'all. They didn't tell the world that Zion broke his foot until after the people had purchased their season tickets. Now it's not that big of a deal if Zion misses a month for season ticket holders, but it is at the same time, bro. I'm paying for 40, one game to Zion Williamson and I don't know how many home games they got in the first month or so, but I'm missing eight of them with Zion. It's a business. I'm actually upset about the injury because I got tickets to Bulls vs. Pelicans for the season opener. And I was like, yeah, this is about to be dope. Season's Zion and Lonzo going against his former team. No, Zion's not gonna be there. Zion is only 21 years old. And there are a lot of expectations on him already. And I think eventually we might see the type of transition that Joel and Bede had as far as him taking his dieting, his overall workouts, all of those things, way more seriously. Now I'm not saying that he doesn't take it serious already, but even Joel and Bede admits that, hey, my first couple of years in the league, I was having Shirley Temples and doing all of these things. And when I really started to get serious about it, that's when I elevated myself to an all NBA player and an MVP candidate. And to think that Zion might not have done that yet and he's still averaged 27 points per game is kind of scary. So we'll see what happens with the Pelicans in Zion Williamson these next couple of weeks. And I'll see y'all hopefully tomorrow. We don't know, I don't know.