Can Zion Williamson, Ja Morant reach their ‘potential’ after years of starts and stops?

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Zion Williamson’s and Ja Morant’s respective NBA teams opened training camp last week in the capital of country music; Williamson’s New Orleans Pelicans just steps from Music Row on the campus of Belmont University, and Morant’s Memphis Grizzlies at a posh, private high school about 15 miles southwest of downtown.

Williamson and Morant arrived in Nashville at almost eerily similar places in their careers, considering the proximity of their childhoods (they grew up about an hour from each other in South Carolina) and their lofty positions in the 2019 NBA Draft. Williamson, of course, went No. 1 that June 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 a looser sense of the word, but both have endured enough trouble (injuries or otherwise) to leave many wondering if they will reach their full potential as the next truly great American basketball superstars.

“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 of nets echoed in Belmont’s Curb Event Center on Day 1 of training camp. “We believe in him here. When he plays, he’s just as dominant as anybody in the NBA.”

In addressing the same question about Morant, Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins said, “It’s easy to say stuff like, ‘the sky’s the limit,’ ‘hall of famer,’ ‘champion.’ I hope I can wish that stuff into existence.”

“I think he’s shown tons of growth in the summer, even last year,” Jenkins said. “But I think he can be one of the greats that’s played this game because of how much he loves it and how much he invests in the craft.

Williamson is 24 and played more games last year (70) than he had in any other season in the NBA, but he dealt with questions about his physical conditioning and the role it continued to play in his relative inability to stay healthy. He had been an All-Star the year before, despite appearing in only 29 games, and the season before that was lost entirely — Williamson missed the whole thing because of 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 because of a hamstring injury.

Morant, 25, was the runaway Rookie of the Year in 2020 while Williamson barely played (just 29 games due to injury). Injuries cost Morant in each of his five seasons, but he was nevertheless blossoming into a star ready for the biggest stages in the NBA in years 3 and 4, when he was twice an All-Star averaging more than 25 points and almost single-handedly accelerating the Grizzlies’ rebuild.

After the All-Star Game in 2023, Morant’s career took a turn. Twice the league suspended him for brandishing a firearm on social media. Just nine games after his return 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 on Team USA last summer for the Paris Olympics, a team of 12 stars that was built not only to win gold (which it did) but to signal a passing of a torch from LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry to a next generation of American super talent.

“If they (Team USA) would have called, you know, I would definitely have picked up, but I guess it wasn’t my time, which is OK,” Williamson said last week. “They went and went out there and brought gold home, which was great for the country. Hopefully in 2028, I’ll be ready.”

Williamson and Morant reaching their potential isn’t really about making the next Olympic team, which will defend gold four years from now at home in Los Angeles. Both players are so talented and dominant, they are obvious candidates so long as they are healthy and otherwise in everyone’s good graces when it’s time to pick the next team. And even if they aren’t in L.A. for the next Olympics, no country will have a roster as deep as the American team.

“We will still have a great chance to win gold, but it won’t be easy,” one USA Basketball source said. “Ja and Zion need to be in the mix. Moving forward, hopefully they can get on track and stay on track.”

Rather, the reason Team USA (and Williamson’s and Morant’s absence from the last iteration) is part of the discussion now is that James, Curry and Durant considered their Paris run a “last dance.” It suggests they will either be retired or not playing at the necessary level to be an American Olympian in 2028. So, between now and then, three players who have been the very best in the NBA for a very, very long time could be gone from the sport, and it is unclear who among the stars born in the U.S. might 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. It’s fair to question, however, after all that’s happened to both of them, whether either will make it quite that far.

“Absolutely (he can),” Williamson said. “Now I just have to do my part and just show it on the court by staying healthy and making some good runs in the playoffs.

“Unfortunately, the injuries happen,” Williamson continued. “So like I said, I got to do my part and I put that on nobody else.”

Williamson mentioned that he, Morant and Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Team USA were the young players he felt were positioned to one day become the American leaders of their sport. Morant was given the same chance to address these questions by The Athletic but tersely declined; Memphis team spokespeople later clarified there was a misunderstanding, and Morant was simply focused on the Grizzlies.

The last American-born NBA MVP was James Harden in 2018. The last three years, the highest an American player has finished in MVP voting was fourth, as foreign-born superstars Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Dončić and Joel Embiid (who coincidentally 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 slots in the 2024 NBA Draft.

Does it matter? On the one hand, the league set attendance records last season and just inked a $76 billion media deal with its most dominant (but not necessarily most popular) players coming from other countries.

But the top three NBA jersey sales last season, according to the league’s data, belonged to three Americans (Curry, James and Jayson Tatum) even though none of them were in the top five in MVP voting. Also, 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 particularly good. Both teams landed in the Play-In Tournament, and the Warriors didn’t advance to the playoffs.

The notion of succeeding James, Curry and Durant when they retire is not about supplanting Antetokounmpo or Dončić or Wembanyama (or Canada’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, an MVP finalist last season), but simply joining them in that first tier of the brightest NBA stars.

“Think about it with Joker (Jokić) and all of those players who weren’t born in the United States, we’re attracting 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 players from those countries who grow up watching (their native-born NBA stars), and it’s going to make our game better. That’s what we want at the end of the day. Sponsorship is going to come. Those (foreign stars) are in Americanized commercials, they have endorsement deals in the States and abroad.

“So, I think that’s one of the cool parts to our game.”

For the American NBA players, there is a pride factor. With foreign-born players dominating recent MVP races and USA Basketball losing three of its last four games at the 2023 FIBA World Cup to finish fourth, Durant told Olympic teammates in the run-up to Paris about the importance of winning gold as a means of showing the rest of the world that Americans were still on top of the basketball world.

James is still arguably the face of the NBA but will turn 40 in December. Curry and Durant are both 36. Of their three teams, the most is expected of Durant’s Phoenix Suns — though even they are not favored to be among the top two or three teams in the West.

The three of them earned their place on the mantel by stockpiling NBA titles and MVPs, and they joined forces last summer to place perhaps a final major stamp on their legacies by winning Olympic gold (a record fourth gold for Durant; third for James; and first for Curry, who had never been in an Olympics).

Their American colleagues are aware a void is coming.

“There are a lot of people in the league thinking about this,” said Brandon Ingram, Williamson’s teammate on the Pels and a former teammate to James who was also a Team USA member for the 2023 World Cup. “I think it’s gonna be good for whoever steps in that position to take advice from the guys who came before them and see their approach to the game. It’s got to be somebody with the personality of LeBron, personality of Kevin Durant, personality of Steph Curry.”

Williamson has a shoe deal with Jordan brand, and Morant is a Nike signature athlete. They have 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 the international game, for Williamson and Morant to do so much more.

(Illustration by Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos of Zion Williamson and Ja Morant: Sean Gardner, Jeff Dean / NBAE via Getty Images)