The Athletic: Zion Williamson turns to new trainer to spark change

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There was a familiar sight at New Orleans Pelicans media day on Monday.

Zion Williamson sat at the podium with his signature smile and chiseled physique from an offseason of hard work, talking about why this season would be different for him and his team.

For many NBA fans, these words from Williamson before the start of a season feel like a rerun of an old TV show they’ve grown tired of watching.

But alongside his optimism about the upcoming season, Williamson took a moment to candidly reflect on where he stands in his career.

“I’m not where I want to be,” Williamson said.

When asked to elaborate, he added, “I’m just not where I need to be. (I’m) not where I want to be.”

Considering Williamson was once viewed as the savior for basketball in New Orleans, it would’ve been impossible to believe back then that, as he heads into his eighth season with the Pelicans, the former No. 1 pick would have only two All-Star appearances and zero minutes played in the postseason.

Yet, despite his previous shortcomings, Williamson’s camp and the Pelicans organization strongly believe the franchise’s face has finally found a formula for success that will return his health and on-court play to the form it needs.

New Orleans’ biggest names backed Joe Dumars on Monday and said they believe in the organization’s direction.
It doesn’t begin with anything he did over the offseason. It dates back to last season and a potentially career-changing hire for the 26-year-old Williamson.

At the start of the 2025-26 season, people close to Williamson reached out to Kris Chrisp, a performance coach who specializes in wellness and recovery, to work directly with the Pelicans star daily. In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, Chrisp said he previously trained NBA players like Jose Alvarado, Davion Mitchell and Jabari Smith Jr., but he figured working with Williamson was the exact move he needed to make at this point in his career.

After a few people in Williamson’s circle interviewed Chrisp, he got hired almost immediately. But there was one issue: As Chrisp began working with Williamson in early November, the latter suffered a Grade 1 hamstring strain, another example of his recurring hamstring issues in both legs. Chrisp’s knowledge and skills were immediately tested.

While that may have been intimidating for some, he viewed it as a blessing in disguise.

“I appreciated it. In anything you do, you want to show your value. You want to show that you’re capable of doing the job you were hired to do,” Chrisp told The Athletic. “Him being hurt when I was hired gave me an opportunity to do my job.”

Chrisp and Williamson got to work.

They pinpointed the injury’s severity and some of the mistakes Williamson previously made that left him vulnerable to a setback.

The more they worked together, the closer they became. Chrisp took pride in earning Williamson’s trust early on as they spent more time together. Along with that trust came some brutal honesty both of them needed to hear along the way.

“He don’t sugarcoat s— with me, and I do the same with him. Sometimes, he’ll stop me in the middle of something and be like, ‘Nah Kris, this ain’t gonna work,’” Chrisp said. “When he showed me the gym at his house for the first time, I said, ‘Bro, this gym is terrible. Let me go in and redo the whole thing.’”

“Trust is the biggest thing that you need when you’re working with these guys,” Chrisp added. “You’ve got to make them believe. If you can develop that trust, and the athlete knows you want the best for them, that’s when you get the best results.”

Williamson gave Chrisp the freedom to update his entire home gym. Chrisp also got Williamson to start focusing more on minor details like stretching, sleeping and understanding how his body is supposed to feel after certain workouts.

The results came quickly, and Williamson was thrilled with how his body started to transform during the season.

“For me, it was just trusting Kris with his process,” Williamson said at media day on Monday. “Looking at the game (in) different ways. Just trying to find different ways to get better.”

Then, another setback came.

Just a few weeks after returning from his hamstring strain, Williamson suffered an adductor injury that doctors initially thought was much more severe. The initial diagnosis foresaw him being sidelined for two months. All signs pointed to Williamson going through another season where he missed more games than he played.

Chrisp pushed back and said he could get him back much sooner.

“I had to get him to trust and believe me when I told him we could beat this timetable. If he didn’t believe, he wouldn’t have come back as soon as he did,” Chrisp said. “I knew what we were facing, and I just had to get him to believe.”

Williamson’s belief paid off. His work in recovery produced results much faster than he could’ve imagined. After initially thinking his season was lost, Williamson returned two weeks later after missing just six games.

It was yet another example of Williamson’s partnership with Chrisp yielding the results he’d been looking for. After his return, Williamson suited up for 35 consecutive games, the longest streak of his career, before sitting out one outing due to an ankle sprain and coming back to play the next 17 matchups.

Williamson ended the season with 62 games played, the second-highest total of his career. It could have been even higher if New Orleans didn’t shut down most of its top rotation players for its final few regular-season games. As he walked away from the season, Williamson looked trim and felt better than he had in years.

He finally found a formula that worked.

Williamson and Chrisp spent the entire offseason together and doubled down on their work. Chrisp says the Pelicans star entered camp weighing 271 pounds after previously being listed most of his career at 284. But along with training Williamson, Chrisp also started acting as somewhat of a spokesman for his client on his personal social media accounts.

Although Williamson has remained private about his offseason work for most of his career, Chrisp flooded X and Instagram with videos of Williamson’s summer workouts and messages boasting about the progress they’ve made over the past year.

In previous years, Williamson’s silence allowed his doubters to fill the void with doubt and negativity. Now, Chrisp’s work on social media has a large portion of Pelicans fans more excited about Williamson than they’ve been in years.

“He’s helped with the social media side of things. If you left it up to me, I probably wouldn’t post anything. I’d just go through the summer workout and show up (to training camp),” Williamson said. “It definitely helps because Kris puts out there what I’m doing so people can see what I’ve got going on. It’s a way for me to show face.”

For years, people around the Pelicans complained that Williamson’s presence wasn’t felt when he wasn’t around the team. His absence fueled questions about his motivation and love for the game.

Now, it’s becoming clearer how strong his drive is to be great. And the message he sent at media day about not being happy with his place in the league’s broader hierarchy only reinforces that.

“I would say I’ve mentally improved with trusting myself and trusting my game,” Williamson said. “Just trusting the work I put in to the point where I’m not second-guessing myself. I would say I’ve grown a lot there.”

Frankly, it’s hard to blame those who still question whether Williamson’s progress is real and say that it’s only a matter of time before the injuries creep back into the picture. We’ve heard these stories before. We’ve seen progress he’s made in the past go down the drain.

But Williamson and the Pelicans share the belief that things are changing in New Orleans. We’ll see if that deja vu eventually kicks in over the next few months.

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William Guillory is a staff writer for The Athletic, covering the Houston Rockets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Before joining The Athletic, he was a writer at The Times-Picayune/NOLA Media Group, and he’s been on the Pelicans beat since 2016. He is a New Orleans native. You can follow William on X @WillGuillory.