I am surprised that no one has posted comments on the situation with Zion's knee, which has him sidelined for weeks at the beginning of the season. It doesn't appear to be a serious injury, but the pundits are already questioning whether a guy who is 6:7", 284 pounds and who has otherworld physical skills and quickness can survive the rigors of a long season without incurring joint damage and particularly knee damage. That thought probably has occurred to most of us since we saw his great capabilities. I hope for his sake and the sake of the NBA that he can avoid serious injury and play a nearly full schedule for a good long career. We shall see.
Realistically there is a pretty good chance that he won't have a long career. Not sure the human body is meant to absorb those kinds of forces that frequently.
So, is this thread...
1) a Zion knee vigil?
2) a Zion needs to lose weight vigil?
3) a Zion needs some better trainers vigil?
4) a Zion’s career may already be in jeopardy vigil?
“Coach said no 3s.” - Zion on The Block
Zion is solid, he doesn't appear to have a lot of excess weight.
Conventional wisdom may suggest that losing 10-15 pounds would be beneficial. In recent years, much conventional medical wisdom has been proven to be spurious.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I wonder whether there is science, studies or epidemiology to suggest that a 5% weight loss in a sturdy, big framed guy like Zion would protect his knees.
First of all, Im not indicating ANY of it is excess weight. So let's just drop that.
Second, a lot of conventional medical wisdom HAS been proven to be spurious...but new emerging research indicates that athletes only have so many explosive jumps in them. Youngsters who have played basketball only from a young age end up losing some of their vertical jumping while still in their teens...where it used to be mid to late 20s for that.
Joints take a pounding related to the weight of the impact, and the number of impacts, and it doesn't matter whether it is muscle or not causing the impact.
This is starting to feel like how the Washington Nationals babied Stephen Strasburg back in 2012. They shut him down in fear of overusing him at a young age and lost to my team (the Cardinals) in a series they would have won in 4 games had he pitched imo. He still got injured and needed Tommy John surgery anyways and 7 seasons later they're finally in a World Series. I'm not saying the Pels should put him out there like the Warriors did to Durant but putting these huge kid gloves on him for every tweak is not going to stop him from getting hurt.
I will admit to having a personal bit in this matter as I live in Oklahoma and after the Thunder gave up and gave in last offseason (and playoffs) and the Pelicans ended up with 5 Duke players on the roster, I made the switch to NOLA as my team. Naturally, both of their games here in Oklahoma that I have amazing tickets to are in November and fall under the "out for weeks" timeline. I'm still going and very excited as there are still 4 Dukies that I love and admire on the team but it still stinks I probably won't be able to easily see Zion this year. So, I don't want them to baby him personally and hope they realize he's a man-mountain not a piece of china in the middle of a rodeo. Let Zanos get his Infinity Gauntlet on!
As someone who is carrying more weight than should be healthy, I’m no expert and yet I have a little relevant experience.
I’d advocate that Zion is an unearthly athlete in spite of his weight, not because of it.
I don’t know how much weight he can or should lose, if at all.
I imagine Zion would actually be even more terrifying an athlete at 250 than 285.
That would still be a crazy amount of strength and muscle to play big, and could open up another level of agility and bounce while also being easier on his body.
There are essentially 3 body types (albeit with some mixtures). Endomorph (fat); ectomorph (thin); mesomorph (muscular). How would we classify Zion?
As a physician, I can definitively say from both professional and personal experience that time spent in New Orleans directly correlates with weight gain.
I worry about Zion.
Not off hand, but I will look. It was on espn.com and the focus was on the downside of kids starting to specialize in only one sport too soon, and having no off season. They used, as examples, the fact that neither Kobe nor MJ did that. It talked about how MJ left the BB play offs and went to the golf course until the next season...not the gym.
Then they cited a lot of emerging research about how kids who specialize and go year round at an early age, start to lose jumping explosiveness at around 19 - whereas it used to be 27-28 (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but the gist is right.). The bigger a player was, the more apt this was to happen.
Obviously this article was not about Zion, but I wonder if it's apt as part of this discussion. I'll try and find it. Maybe a month ago I read it...
This is where I fear being, minus a local NBA franchise. My friend and I are talking a road trip to Indy/Memphis, maybe even New Orleans, to see him. But when confronting the likelihood that we'd sink all that money and then not see him anyway, it seems better to direct my disposable-out-of-town-$$$ towards notbasketball.
This is getting rather tangential, but I found this TED talk -- Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger? -- completely fascinating. The part from about 7 minutes on discusses how much more selective different sports have become for extreme body types and seems particularly relevant to Zion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8COaMKbNrX0
FYI here it is...https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/...uth-basketball