“Reposted from ESPN”
The New Orleans Pelicans announced that forward Zion Williamson left the NBA bubble at the Walt Disney World Resort on Thursday morning because of an urgent family medical matter and that he intends to rejoin the team at a later date.
“We fully support Zion’s decision to leave the NBA campus to be with his family,” Pelicans executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin said in a statement. “Out of respect for the Williamson family, we will have no further comment at this time.”
If his absence lasts seven days or fewer, Williamson will quarantine for four days upon his return to the NBA bubble if he has a negative test each day he’s outside the bubble.
If he is gone longer than a week, he will still quarantine for four days if he has a negative test for the final seven days he is gone. If he doesn’t have the required testing, he will quarantine for 10 days.
“Don’t know anything right now from the standpoint of him coming back,” Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry said. “Obviously for us, we’re just very supportive of him and his family and his privacy during this time right now.”
Williamson has played in only 19 games in his rookie season for the Pelicans after coming back in January from meniscus surgery.
“As far as the impact on our team, we played 44 games without him,” Gentry said. “We had a tough stretch in there, but we also had a stretch where we won [11] out of 16 without him. Obviously he’s a great player that we’ll miss, but the one thing we always talked about — even through the tough times — is next man up. We’re a good team. We’re a deep team, that’s the one thing we are. We’ll have guys step in and play, and guys that will lift their game a little more.
“But right now, we’re not concerned about the basketball part for him, what we’re concerned about is family.”
