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1 day ago · Skinny Zion?! Best shape of his life: Zion Williamson? You know what season it is. Sure, it’ll be football season soon. And we know fall is right around the corner.
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13 hours ago · Let 'Muscle Watch 2024' — the NBA's annual social media "he's in the best shape of his life" frenzy — begin. First up is perennial muscle watch favorite Zion Williamson, who sparked ...
Zion Lateef Williamson (born July 6, 2000) is an American professional basketball player for the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He plays the power forward position. [1]
Jul 6, 2000 · View the profile of New Orleans Pelicans Power Forward Zion Williamson on ESPN. Get the latest news, live stats and game highlights.
- Overview
- Early life
- College: Duke
- NBA: New Orleans Pelicans
Zion Williamson (born July 6, 2000, Salisbury, North Carolina, U.S.) is a power forward for the New Orleans Pelicans and one of the most explosive players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Since his high-school days, Williamson has impressed fans with his electrifying dunks and other dynamic plays. However, various injuries have limited...
Williamson grew up in South Carolina. His parents, Sharonda Sampson and Lateef Williamson, are both former college athletes. His father played football at North Carolina State University and Livingstone College, while his mother ran track at the latter school. Williamson was named for Mount Zion in Jerusalem. When he was about five years old, his parents divorced, and Sampson later married Lee Anderson.
It was about this time that Williamson told Sampson that his goal was to be the number one college basketball player in the United States. Anderson—who played college basketball at Clemson University—began honing the boy’s skills at point guard. When he was nine years old, Williamson was getting up every day at 5 am for running drills and shooting practice. In middle school his mother coached his team, and Williamson averaged 20 points per game.
During his senior year (2017–18), Williamson committed to play college basketball for Duke University. At the time, he was regarded as the second best prospect in the country, behind R.J. Barrett, who would be his teammate at Duke. But Williamson had the most hype, generating hundreds of thousands of views for his highlight clips on YouTube and being dubbed a “once in a generation-type athlete” by NBA superstar Kevin Durant.
Williamson enrolled at Duke in 2018 and was an immediate standout on the court. However, he suffered a bizarre injury at a high-profile game against in-state rival University of North Carolina in February 2019. Less than a minute into the contest, the Nike sneaker on Williamson’s left foot fell apart, leading to a knee injury that sidelined him for the last five games of the regular season. He then returned to win the Most Valuable Player award of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. In the NCAA tournament, Williamson led Duke to the “Elite Eight.” However, he struggled late in that game, and Duke was eliminated.
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Williamson was selected as the number one pick by the New Orleans Pelicans. However, a knee injury prevented him from making his NBA debut until the second half of his rookie season (2019–20), and he averaged 22.5 points in 24 games. He improved the next season, averaging 27 points in 61 games. But he missed his entire third season (2021–22) with a foot injury, and a hamstring injury limited him to just 29 games in 2022–23, when he averaged 26 points. By the end of his fourth year in the NBA, Williamson had played just 114 games, which amounted to 37 percent of the Pelicans’ games.
Still, when he has played, Williamson has been a prolific scorer, using his strength and quickness to create opportunities while being double- and triple-teamed. During the summer before the 2023–24 season, Williamson turned to medical experts to come up with a plan that would keep him healthy for an entire 82-game NBA season.
- Fred Frommer
Jul 6, 2000 · Zion Williamson Stats and news - NBA stats and news on New Orleans Pelicans Forward Zion Williamson.
Nov 29, 2022 · Williamson (2,524) is the 12th player in NBA history with 2,500 points in his first 100 career games. He's the first player since Michael Jordan to accomplish the feat.