The New Orleans Pelicans announced on Friday that Zion Williamson suffered a fractured left ring finger and would be out indefinitely. Williamson underwent an evaluation and CT scan prior to the team departing for Friday’s game against the Sixers which revealed the fracture.
Williamson sustained the injury on Tuesday against the Warriors. Moments after the team issued a release on Williamson’s injury, executive vice president of basketball operations David Griffin spoke to the media and unleashed on how he was officiated this season.
“We told the NBA through every means available to us…that the way they were officiating Zion was going to get him injured,” Griffin said. “And, quite frankly, he’s injured now because of the open season that there’s been on Zion Williamson in the paint.”
Griffin noted the team had attempted to go about it through any means possible by having conversations with the league and officials and both the front office and coaching staff sending in video clips in an effort to show their complaints on how Williamson was being officiated.
Those clips, though, did not have the intended effect on the officiating that Griffin and the Pelicans had desired, leading to this injury.
“I want to be clear, we failed,” Griffin said. “We did not protect him appropriately. We did not make the message clear enough because this was avoidable.”
The Pelicans have six games remaining this season over the final 10 days of the regular season. Williamson joins Brandon Ingram on the sideline, who suffered a sprained ankle in the win over the Warriors as well.
