The fortunes for the New Orleans Pelicans changed in May 2019 when they won the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft Lottery. One month later they selected who many considered the biggest cannot miss prospect since LeBron James. Unfortunately for the Pelicans, that said player was on the shelf the first two-plus quarters of this season because of surgery. When he did return to the court in late January brought that exceptional skill and competitive spirit that he displayed in his lone season for the Duke University Blue Devils and got the Pelicans back into playoff contention. His rehab to get back onto the hardwood; the impact he has had for the Pelicans and his thoughts on his rookie season so far were among the things he chatted via video conference last Wednesday on the latest installment of “#NBATogether” with NBA on TNT studio host Ernie Johnson.
Last week, Johnson chatted via video with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 draft Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans (28-36), whose squad crawled back from a 6-22 start, which included a franchise worst 13-game losing streak to pull within 3.5 games of the No. 8 and final playoff spot in the Western Conference held by the Memphis Grizzlies (32-33).
To put into context how the Pelicans turned the corner with the return of the Williamson, they were 18-27 without him, scoring on average 114.6 points on 45.4 percent from the field, while giving up on average 48.6 percent from the field to their opponents and averaging 46.0 rebounds. They have gone 10-9 with Williamson in the lineup, averaging 119.8 points on 48.2 percent shooting, while allowing the opposition to connect on 45.8 percent of their shots and registering 49.4 boards in those 19 contests.
Head Coach Alvin Gentry’s squad was hoping to pull even close to the Pelicans for that No. 8 and final playoff spot in the rugged West, but due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic have seen their season put on pause with no timetable of when they along with the other 29 teams will resume the 2019-20 NBA campaign.
Williamson, who missed the first 44 games because of the aforementioned surgery on his knee told Johnson that he is holding up well during this pandemic, and right from the jump he stepped up to help make the lives of the employees of the Pelicans’ home arena The Smoothie King Center by paying for their salaries for one month.
“I did it because it’s what my mom taught me,” Williamson said. “There was a time when I was in a situation where something like this happened. No one was going to hand my mom something. Nobody was just gonna give my mom.”
“Smoothie King workers always setup the court beautifully. Every time I walked into the arena, I always hugged everybody, dapped everybody up, and you know, they feel like family to me. So, it kind of hurt me at first thinking, ‘I’m not gonna see them for God knows how long. I felt like it was the least I can do.”
That kind gesture is a perfect example of the kind of human being Williamson has displayed about being a very grounded 19-year-old off the hardwood as well as a very talented player on the court, which he learned to be from his mother Sharonda Sampson and his stepfather Lee Anderson.
On draft night back on June 20, 2019 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, Williamson said to ESPN’s Maria Taylor upon getting drafted while crying tears of joy that his mother “sacrificed” a lot for him to be in position to be drafted No. 1 overall by the Pelicans, and that he would not be where he is at without her.
Williamson said in his maturation as a basketball player that his stepfather, who was also his trainer taught him the fundamentals of basketball, and how important it was to hone those fundamentals, which will take him places far beyond what he could imagine.
He added that is mother coached him, who he called the “hardest” coach Williamson said he ever had. There were times that his stepfather would say he had a good game and his mother said that he could had played a lot better.
Williamson said there was a game where he played well but turned the ball over way too much.
Even at an early age, Williamson learned from his folks that in order to be great he had to put in the work when everyone else is not.
That is why at an early age Williamson got up at 5:30 a.m. to work on his game at the outdoor court of McLeod Park in Florence, SC, where he was told by his stepfather that the greats of the game in Michael Jordan and Earvin “Magic” Johnson got up and put in the work to be the best.
Williamson learned that if he wanted to be at the level of the two great MJs that he had to figure out a way to put in the work and do it harder than anybody else if want to achieve that level of greatness.
“As a kid, I didn’t understand what she was doing,” Williamson said. “But as I got older, I realized that it was best for me. It really helped me that in a tough situation like in a game, just remain calm. Always think two to three plays ahead. Don’t let the score get you rattled. Just remain calm. So, I credit both of them for making me who I am.”
From that hard work and dedication is how Williamson made the impossible look easy, like dunking on people, which he had done frequently in games during his rookie season.
The first Williamson said that he dunked occurred outside of a game was in Marion High School in Marion, SC where one of his friends threw the ball in the air and Williamson threw it down softly.
Williamson’s first in game dunk came in the first contest of his high school career for the Spartanburg Day School Griffins where his teammate threw it up and it posturized someone and it has continued today in the NBA.
He told Johnson that while he dunked in practice, it was not something he did on a regular basis saying that his leg had to be feeling “super good” for him to dunk.
“I think it wasn’t until late in my freshmen year when I could probably dunk consistently,” Williamson said.
Aside from his ability to excite a crowd in attendance with his ability to dunk on people, Williamson had the kind of game that put himself and his school on the map. In fact, superstar Drake was rocking Williamson’s jersey on social media as Williamson was just on the verge of becoming more well known.
“This is crazy,” Williamson, who was 16 years old at the time said of that moment. “I don’t why he wore my jersey but you know, just thank you for the love and support.”
As good as he was though as a high schooler, it was not until he played on the AAU circuit with the South Carolina Hornets, where he played that ninth-grade summer with fellow rookie guard for the Memphis Grizzlies Ja Morant, the No. 2 overall in last June’s draft.
While he fit in well with the team on the hardwood that summer, Williamson said that he was “quiet,” and kept to himself, even though he would share a laugh with his teammates.
Morant by comparison played with a drive and relentlessness to be the best player on the court, which he has brought to the Grizzlies and had him in position to be the Kia Rookie of the Year before Williamson came back from injury.
“As Ja being a brother of mine, I’m happy for Ja,” Williamson said about Morant being in the lead position for Rookie of the Year. “You know, Ja has worked for that. He’s earned it. I give respect when its due. I always do.”
Williamson added about the Rookie of the Year race, “But as a competitor, I’m just a competitor. I want to win at everything. I’m not gonna sit here and say I don’t want to win. I want to win at everything. So, my goal was to rally my team into the playoffs. Hopefully, I can make a run for it, but it’s just God’s plan at this point. So, if Ja wins it, I’m gonna be happy for Ja. He’s my brother.”
During this pandemic, Williamson has been sheltering at his home in New Orleans, LA, especially the fact that “The Big Easy” has some of the highest Coronavirus cases in the country currently. As far as to when the Pelicans might begin the process of getting together to resume their season, it is up the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards (D) to decide once the number of cases shrink down to a level they can open things up again.
For a number of players across the league, while they have said they have been able to do things to try to keep their conditioning up so they can be in the best position to get things going if the season were to resume, a lot of them have not done much basketball stuff because they do not have a hoop available to shoot on.
Williamson has been able to keep some kind of rhythm basketball wise because he does have a basketball hoop at his home.
The tough part of the season being put on hold is that Williamson was just really finding his groove in his rookie season after missing the first 44 games because of necessary surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his knee that was sustained back in a preseason game on Oct. 13, 2019.
In his 19 appearances in his rookie season, Williamson has led all rookies averaging 23.6 points and 6.8 rebounds, on 58.9 percent shooting. He scored 20 points or more in 16 of his 19 appearances, which ranked 3rd amongst the 2019-20 rookie class.
To Williamson, he saw this moment of the stoppage of the league because of the COVID-19 Pandemic from two different perspectives. The one hand, the suspension of play “sucks” because as mentioned he had just returned after being on the shelf for 3-4 months rehabbing his knee and as he was finding his way in his first NBA season, the pandemic shut everything down.
The other perspective is that it gave Williamson extra time to get his knee even more heeled, while also getting in even better shape for if or when the NBA season were to resume that he would be ready, which he said to Johnson that he is ready now to get back to action.
“Honestly, I’m ready now,” Williamson told Johnson. “I’ve been staying in shape. Working on myself and just staying ready because you never know when that time is gonna come when they say, ‘Alright, let’s resume,’ and I don’t want to look at my teammates like, ‘Sorry guys. I’m just not ready.’ I’m staying ready for my teammates.’”
Besides learning the fundamentals and the will to work hard that he got from his mother and stepfather, Williamson also learned a lot about the game from Hall of Fame head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
The biggest lesson he said that “Coach K” taught him was when you are surrounded by other great players like he was playing with fellow Lottery picks in RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish, the No. 3 and No. 10 overall pick respectably by the New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks back in June 2019 that you have to find other ways to make your impact on a game.
Williamson also said that “Coach K” taught him to be the “best version” of himself. To never let anybody tell him he cannot do something on the court and to always put in the work like getting extra shots up at practice.
Perhaps the most important lesson Williamson said he learned is to never take anything for granted, which he experienced last season in a game against arch-rival North Carolina where he blew out his left shoe as well as got injured.
Williamson said as he was escorted to the locker room and was examined on the training table with his mom by his side that the reality set in that the dream of making it to the NBA could be over.
He was so disappointed about missing out playing against the Tar Heels that Williamson told someone in the training room to cut the televisions off.
“I couldn’t watch for a few moments. It was hurting me too much inside and I just didn’t know,” Williamson said. “What was going to happen next?”
“But it didn’t last long because my mom came. Put her arms around me and said, ‘It’s okay. You’ll be back before you know it.’ I was back in two weeks. I was able to play. So, it was just a quick terror moment. But those terror moments do scare you.”
Williamson came back and help to lead the Blue Devils into the 2019 NCAA Tournament, better known as “March Madness.” Unfortunately, the they fell short of reaching the Final Four falling to Michigan State 68-67 in the Elite 8, despite getting 24 points and 14 rebounds from Williamson.
While falling short of having a chance to compete for a National Championship, Williamson said the year was “great.” He learned a lot and forged some long-lasting friendships with the likes of the aforementioned Barrett and Reddish.
When it came time to decide to go for his other dream of turning pro or come back for another year at Duke, Williamson decided to take the leap and put his name in the NBA draft.
While it took a while for Williamson to get on the court when the games really counted in his rookie season, he got his NBA career started with a bang registering 22 points and seven rebounds in 18 minutes in the Pelicans 121-117 loss versus the five-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs (27-36) on Jan. 22 on ESPN.
At one point in the fourth quarter, Williamson scored 17 consecutive points in the final period, connecting on four threes versus the Spurs.
Throughout this small sample size of what Williamson has shown in this beginning stage of his career, he has drawn comparisons to Hall of Famer and NBATV/NBA on TNT studio analyst Charles Barkley.
Williamson says though that he does not play like “anyone” and that he wants to bring his own “flair” and “tenacity” to the hardwood each night.
“I don’t want to be known like anybody else,” Williamson said. “I want to be known as Zion and only Zion.”
He did say that he has been watching the ESPN Docuseries on the last season of Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 World Champion Chicago Bulls “The Last Dance.”
When Williamson first started playing basketball, his mom told him of three players that he needed to go look up and watch. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
He did what his mother asked and Williamson really learned how good these three players, who are like the pillars in the eyes of a lot of people in NBA history.
Williamson was very captivated by Jordan, from his ability to score on people. His ability to make mid-range jump shots at a high clip. How he made plays for his teammates. The way he played with as much focus and determination at the defensive end as he did at the offensive end.
The one thing that Jordan said in the Docuseries that caught Williamsons’ attention was that he played like someone, whether it they watched on television or in person at the arena like they were seeing him for the first time and that he wanted to leave an ever-lasting impression.
“For him to have that mindset and to actually play with that mindset throughout his career, it just said a lot about him,” Williamson said about Jordan.
Williamson also said that he learned how great of a leader Jordan was. He knew that MJ was a leader, but he was a leader that was devoted to getting better at his craft. That he worked extremely hard at improving his game on the court, taking it from practice to the floor on gameday.
At just the tender age of 19 Zion Williamson has achieved a lot early on in his basketball career. He made a name for himself on the hardwood at the high school level, putting Spartanburg Day School on the map, to where Drake was rocking his jersey on social media. He went to Duke and grew both as a player and person both on and off the court. He took every lesson he learned from his mother Sharonda Sampson and his stepfather Lee Anderson and put it into action and became the No. 1 overall pick in 2019 NBA Draft in June of 2019. He overcame a knee injury to start his rookie season and came back to play at a level that made the NBA and the city of New Orleans, LA take notice.
Barring any injury setbacks, the future of Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans is so bright that we all will need shades to make sure we do not miss a second of it.
As great as Williamson has been on the floor, it is matched by his humility and focus to be just as responsible and respect to others off the floor as well.
He has simply been solid and is a great example of the kind of person and athlete that a parent would want their child to model themselves after.
More than anything, Williamson has understood that getting to where he has gotten so far has been a grind both from getting up early as a youngster and simply working at his craft, while also never straying from who he is and never letting someone limiting what you are capable of doing whether it be in basketball or anything else in life.
“Just be the best version of you that you can be,” Williamson said to Johnson about what it takes to reaching your goals. “Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Just be the best version of yourself.”
Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 4/28/2020 7 p.m. edition NBATV’s “Gametime,” with Stephanie Ready, Brian Shaw, and Jim Jackson; 4/29/2020 8:30 p.m. edition NBATV’s “#NBATogether With Ernie Johnson: With Zion Williamson;” www.google.com; https://www.espn.com/nba/team/schedule/_/name/no; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_governors_of_Louisiana#Governors_of_the_State; https://www.espn.com/nb/standings; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Williamson.
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