The New Orleans Pelicans they entered the 2024-25 campaign expecting, at the very least, to make the playoffs, but their start to the season left a lot to be desired. Friday’s embarrassing 115-88 loss against an Orlando Magic team without Paolo Banchero dropped New Orleans to 3-7 on the season. The only Western Conference team below them in the rankings is the Utah Jazz.

The worst part of this loss was that the Pelicans’ best player, Zion Williamson, missed another game due to injury. He played in their previous game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, but sat in Orlando – his fourth game already missed this season. It turns out Williamson will have to miss more than just Friday’s game as he’s dealing with a hamstring strain, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.

The hamstring injury will keep Williamson out of action indefinitely. This is just the latest major blow in a Pelicans season that is quickly spiraling out of control.

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Williamson missing weeks with an injury wouldn’t be the end of the world if the Pelicans weren’t dealing with a bunch of other injuries, but that’s not the case. The Pelicans are dealing with as many injuries as any NBA team.

Williamson joins Dejounte Murray, CJ McCollum, Herb Jones, Jordan Hawkins and Trey Murphy III on the edge at present. Murphy is expected to make his season debut in New Orleans’ next game, but the others are ruled out. This is pretty much their entire starter lineup, with EXCEPT to Brandon Ingram.

This injury isn’t season-ending, and the regular season isn’t even a month old, but this couldn’t have come at a worse time for New Orleans. Once again, the Pelicans are only one team behind in the Western Conference. 11 of the 15 teams in that conference are over .500, and the Pelicans are already four games under that .500 mark.

Their path to the playoffs would be tough given how good the conference is, even with everyone healthy, so all these injuries happening at once make their road that much more difficult. The Pelicans will have to dig out of a major hole to get in. Hopefully a trade or two is on the horizon to give the Pelicans some sort of short-term boost.