Zion Williamson has played as many minutes of college basketball as most people on earth, and yet he’s already the sport’s biggest star. A former high school mixtape legend for his jaw-dropping leaping ability and hyper-aggressive dunks, Williamson will make his collegiate debut on Tuesday, Nov. 6 for the Duke Blue Devils against the Kentucky Wildcats in an early matchup of two top-5 teams.
Before that happens, though, the hype train around Williamson continues to move full speed ahead. Williamson was one of the standouts during the team’s summer trip to Canada to play a trio of universities north of the border. That’s all over, and now, Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski has to try and determine where exactly a player as freakishly athletic as Williamson, who is listed at 6’7 and 285 pounds on the team’s official website.
“You’re talking about somewhere around a 270-pound, 6-6/6-7 player,” Coach K told Myron Medcalf of ESPN last month. “He’s not overweight. He’s this unique athlete. By far the best jumper. Lateral movement is quicker and he floats. It’s tough to explain. We’re still learning how to position him.”
It’s one hell of a problem to have. Reading between the lines, Krzyzewski sounds like he believes Williamson’s general lack of height doesn’t matter, because he’s built like a brick you-know-what house and is quick as a cat. It’s not quite trying to figure out where to play someone with Russell Westbrook’s athleticism in Charles Barkley’s body, but that might not be too far off.
The bigger issue is who is around Williamson. This is a very good problem, because the two biggest “concerns” are R.J. Barrett and Cameron Reddish, who are 6’7 and 6’8, respectively. They also joined Williamson to mark the first time a recruiting class featured the top-three players in America all going to the same school. The three are all talented enough to figure it out during what will almost certainly be their one year playing college hoops together, but it will be fascinating to watch how the Blue Devils mix and match during the first few weeks of the year.
At any rate, while Barrett and Reddish are both really good players, most of the intrigue around Duke stems from whether Williamson’s game translates to college. As Barrett told ESPN, there’s an awfully good chance that happens, because Williams is just that athletic.
“Freak of nature,” Barrett said. “Never seen anything like it. Love playing with him. Throw the ball anywhere, he gets it. Whenever he has the ball, something good happens. There was one time, this was just recently, like last week, I threw up a floater and I missed and he dunked over the big man that was on our team, Marques [Bolden]. He dunks over him. He just takes two steps and just flies. And he dunks it so hard.”
Williamson’s ability to levitate kind of undersells the fact that he’s, you know, a very good basketball player and more than just someone who jumps like gravity isn’t real. Still, the expectation is that Williamson is going to spend this year making opponents look silly, with his teammates and coaches at Duke helping to further the legend of a spring-loaded teenager.
(Via ESPN)
