He was more than the players.

Whenever he comes back, he is alive.

Everyone.

The New Orleans Pelicans still waiting for the regular season debut.

A couple Raul draft choice.

Zion, as is the rest of the sports world, but we may be getting close.

He's still in active as he recovers from arthroscopic knee surgery, but it's practicing again and still wind the trial during pregame warmups.

Here's Pelican supporter Andrew Lopez.

Things carry another big milestone coming up for Zion Williamson within the hour as he returns to five on five girls in practice.

It's another step for him.

He'd been doing four on four drills of players and coaches yesterday, but today he takes the next step.

Now how long before he comes back?

We're still waiting on that.

Pelicans have a stretch of five games in a day that started last night with the loss to Utah Jazz.

When they get back from that, that's when they start to get him a couple of Mawr practices.

They want to get three or four total before they let him take his assessment test and get him back on the court.

We're looking at maybe next week for a start, maybe the week after, but he is getting closer to making his MBA debut.

But now for today, let's get behind this 5.5 practice and then we'll take it from there, all right, and thank you for that.

Meanwhile, we welcome back our NPR welcome and RNB analyst Tim Legler.

So once Zion is ready to go and science it, if it was up to him, he would have been on the court long ago.

How do you feel the pelican should play him?

Should maybe more cautious Or should they just let him go out there and do what he needs to dio?

Well, I think carry initially, you're going to be cautious.

I think you know you gotta have a time restriction on him.

I would think to be somewhere in that 24 25 minute range, shocked if he plays back to back at any point this season, I think it's it's prudent to proceed with caution.

Rezaian's.

I'm perfectly fine with how long it's taken him to get back in.

If he needs to get in a number of 505 practices to where they see he is perfectly comfortable playing in traffic because that's really what it comes down to when you come back from one of these injuries.

You could do all these things without contact all you want to.

You've gotta show that not all your teammates and your coaching staff you've got it.

Prove it in your own mind that you're comfortable again, jumping and catching the ball and landing in traffic.

And that's what Zion has to prove.

And that might take several workouts before he really feels like he can play with reckless abandon, cause the last thing you want him out there doing is thinking about where he's landing, being worried about being injured, that might take four or five practices.

If that's the case, so be it.

It took a little bit longer than we thought, but it's time, then, to get him on the court to play him, Even forgetting about whether it seemed could make any kind of a run.

It's more about Zion Williamson being out on the court and taking advantage of a year when he's in peak physical and athletic condition, which is what he is now at this age.

So we're all excited to see him back.

Hopefully, that's going to be soon.

And hopefully he stays back.

But expect him to have a minutes restriction and certainly back to backs to be a problem for Zion the rest of this season.

Yeah, Legs, thank you so much for that, cause I was gonna ask the question.

I was like, What is this season really about?

Do they want to try to push for maybe some type of spot in the seedings?

Or do they just want to see how well he will do in terms of his first season as a pelican?

And if he can do his his best as a working here in the NBA?

Legs?

Thank you so much for joining us here on SportsCenter.

Coast Coast.

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