Riley always had his players swole and ripped. It's either terrifying thinking of Zion that way or an even faster route to early career ending injury.
There are no 30 year old superstars with these attributes. IMO he's 2-3 years late getting game experience and refining his game. He'll get away with it for the next few years but he has a lot of work to do.
There has been a ton of research on it and it's really not looking good for him. Phx actually has one of the best training staffs in the entire NBA and I would imagine they could fix him better than a team like NO. Take the knee for one example, it's what you would call a "dumb joint". It hinges like a door without any rotation. Everytime he moves his knees are doing things they are not designed to do (mostly laterally). There's movements in the kinetic chain that are more harmful than others, but Zions lower extremity has breaks in just about every single way you can break a kinetic chain (ankle/knee/hip complexes). It hasn't stopped him from being explosive, which is actually worse for his joints. He really should continue to take extra time off and fix this if he wants to have a career beyond this contract. I'd estimate it would take over 6 months to come close to fixing his biomechanics, but could actually help him reach his potential more than just a 20 lb weight loss program.
For a man that likes to eat, Houston would be a bad place to go on a diet. Every time I visit, I come back 5 lbs heavier.
Okay, so I've been watching Zion just like everyone since before the draft. I've always thought his biomechanics will cause him to have an injury plagued career (have posted that since the start)... But there's something interesting I see for the first time in Zions career... improved quality of movement. I'm sure in this video a lot of other things will stand out... like... casually doing a 360 with flare. But there's something a thousand times more important here... his walk. It's not perfect, but it's so much better in this video. Maybe it's just the angle, but his lower extremities are aligned and there's not a whole lot of breaks in the kinetic chain. If you're a fan of Zion and believe in him this is great news. My biggest reason for not believing in Zion has been his movement quality paired with his explosiveness and weight. That has been a formula for, well..you see how his career has gone so far. We might be looking at a legit comeback here... I'll be paying attention to more videos of him walking to confirm, but this improvement can't be understated. Fixing his biomechanics has probably been super tough on him since it's a long process full of corrective exercises (like rehab exercises). I didn't think he'd make a sustainable comeback until I saw this change. This is the first sign of an actual sustainable comeback
