Zion Williamson has a great many talents. He’s obviously able to jump out of a building, making it easy for him to produce jaw-dropping highlights on either end of the floor. Even when he’s not flying high, Williamson’s strength, quickness, ball-handling, and vision oftentimes lead to stuff that we’ve rarely seen out of basketball players so young.
One of Williamson’s talents, it turns out, is not singing. The New Orleans Pelicans held an open practice on Saturday evening that included some delightful rookie hazing, as all three of the team’s first-round picks in the 2019 NBA Draft had to show off their pipes. Williamson, admittedly, did not do great. He was tasked with singing all-time jam “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston, a great karaoke song that he did not sing until the chorus came around.
Zion tried his hardest to play the cool card but the crowd finally got it out of him 😂😂 @Zionwilliamson pic.twitter.com/Xgi0BTMXtQ
— Will Guillory (@WillGuillory) October 6, 2019
Nickeil Alexander-Walker, however, was the star of the evening. He was tasked with another first-ballot Karaoke Hall of Fame tune, “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton, and knocked it out of the park.
https://twitter.com/PelicansNBA/status/1180635176939991040
The team’s third first-round selection, Jaxson Hayes, also got in on the fun, as he sang some Madonna.
Jaxson Hayes signing Like A Prayer and was very upset they didn't start the song at the beginning.
— Andrew Lopez (@_Andrew_Lopez) October 6, 2019
There are two lessons to take away from this. The first is that Alexander-Walker should do this more often, because while his singing his fine, his karaoke skills are tremendous. The second is that Williamson should get some more karaoke reps, because he does seem pretty new to this, and jumping right into a hard song to sing like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” is a tall task. If he ever goes again, we’d recommend something like “Wonderwall,” instead.
