Before Zion Williamson would be called the next LeBron James
Before he would cover SLAM magazine at 16 years old
Before he would sign with Duke and be the most looked at player, probably within the
last decade Before he would be the projected number one
pick in the 2019 NBA Draft And before he was shutting down high school
gyms across the nation doing things like this
Zion’s mother named her son after Mount Zion in the Bible, which is considered the
highest point in ancient Jerusalem.
She said:
“When I was pregnant, my grandmother kept telling me he is going to be extra special,
so when you go look for a name for him, look for something extra special.
Flipping through the Bible and Zion just caught me.”
And it seems fitting, because Zion is one mountain of a man…
At just 18 years old, the kid is 6 foot 7 and weighs 285 pounds.
And he’s even strong enough to do… this to a basketball
At 16 he was the same height and only a few pounds lighter.
That same year, Zion covered Slam Magazine and the cover asked “are you ready for Zion
Williamson?”
And while the world might not have been ready at the time, I think it’s safe to say, they
are now.
Zion grew up with parents who were both former college athletes and had dreams of being the
best player in the world from a young age.
But he wasn’t just a dreamer, he was willing to put in the work, waking up at 5am every
morning at the age of 9 to work on his skills.
Although he was overlooked early on in his career, after hitting a growth spurt in the
9th grade, there wasn’t an important person in the basketball world that didn’t make
a trip down to see Zion play live.
Famous rappers and athletes started posting pics in his jerseys, but it was one person
in particular who came to watch Zion, that left a lasting impression.
But we’ll get into all of that in just a minute!
What’s going on good people in the comment section???
I hope you’re having one Hecht of a day.
My name is Jeremy Hecht here for you on Before They were Famous taking you through the life
and career of Zion Williamson prior to fame.
If you haven’t watched some of the newer videos, I’m the LA host for this channel
and I’ll be doing weekly content to help out Michael who has an insanely busy schedule.
Be sure to tune into Famous News every Monday Through Friday to get your daily dose of entertainment
updates.
We've also done recent profiles on celebs like Future, Ariana Grande as well as other
athletes like Julian Edelman, JuJu Smith and Joel Embid in the past so be sure to check
those out after you finish watching this video.
In the meantime in between time, if there are any celebs you want us to do in future
episodes, or other athletes, let us know in the comment section down below.
But without any more talking, let’s get into the video.
Zion Lateef Williamson was born on July 6, 2000 in Salisbury North Carolina to his mother
Sharonda Sampson and his father Lateef Williamson.
Lateef is 6 foot 4, 270 pounds and played football as a defensive lineman.
He was a high school all American at Darlington High, later playing at North Carolina State
and Livingstone College in the 70’s.
Sharonda also ran track at Livingstone and regularly cleared the 6 foot mark in the high
jump competition.
So it’s safe to say there was a good chance he would be pretty athletic.
But even his mom couldn’t have guessed that Zion would have a 46 inch vertical:
After the passing of her mother, Sampson moved her family from Greenville to South Carolina.
Zion’s parents divorced when he was only 5 years old and his mom married his new step-father,
Lee Anderson.
Lee played college basketball at Clemson in the 70’s but two weeks before going to the
NBA camp, he was hit by a car.
Zion also has a little brother Noah who is adorable.
Just before his freshman year, Sampson enrolled Zion in Salisbury Day School, which is a college
prep school where each student is required to play at least one sport from grades 7-12,
and by high school, it became a pretty easy choice for Zion.
But prior to taking over the court, he actually played Soccer and Football as a quarterback.
When he was 5 years old though, he dreamt of one day becoming a college basketball star.
He told his mom and step father at 5 that he was eventually going to go to college and
be the number one player in the country.
And he had the work ethic to make those dreams come true.
So Zion got to work.
His step dad taught him some point guard skills and he became the only 5-year-old on the 9-year
old Sumter Falcons AAU team.
He started training as a guard and learned how to shoot and handle the ball on that team.
At the age of 9 he knew he wanted to be in the NBA one day, so he would wake up at 5am
every morning to train.
When I was 9, I had similar dreams.
I was a hockey Goalie and like Zion, I dreamed of one day making it to the league.
In fact, the only thing I was worried about was that I would win an NHL championship and
I wouldn’t be able to lift up the Stanley Cup…
I know, that was my only worry.
Not making the league, not making the finals, just not being strong enough physically, as
a grown man to lift up the championship trophy…
But as you can see, one of our original dreams worked out better than the other and now I
don’t have to lift anything to talk to you guys!
According to Jalek Felton, one of Zion’s roomates at the Elite 24 basketball camp,
Zion couldn’t dunk or shoot very well in the sixth grade.
Zion’s mother coached his team in middle school, where she was also a teacher.
Zion scored 20 points per game that year and she said:
“He was a pass-first point guard.
If he was open, he’d take the shot, but he liked to make plays.”
It was in 7th grade that he dropped his other two sports of soccer and football and began
focusing solely on hooping.
In terms of basketball influences, Zion never had a favorite team, but he was a big fan
of Carmelo on the knicks and the tenacity of Russell Westbrook.
But it wasn’t the same “Chosen One” story that LeBron James had growing up.
Although it would be hard not to notice Zion’s stature now, he wasn’t always that big and
he wasn’t nationally recognized until high school.
At first, kids at their school wouldn’t even show up to the games since it was mostly
recognized as an academic school.
In fact, you couldn’t even get turned down from any of the sports teams for lack of ability
if you wanted to play.
Even if I was the worst basketball player ever I probably would have joined just to
say I was teammates with the future goat.
Zion says in 9th grade that he was 5’8 and really skinny so he was playing point guard.
But after he fell and broke his wrist during a game in his freshman year, an x-ray from
the doctor showed that Zion had a growth plate open.
And the doctor projected he could grow up to 5 inches!
And sure enough, from 9th to 11th grade he went from being 5’8 to 6’7 and from weighing
175 punds to 240.
He dunked for the first time in 9th grade after his first growth spirt, and from there,
he only elevated.
His high school coach Lee Sartor said while Zion was in 10th grade:
“There weren’t too many people around a year ago.
People like to say they were, but, trust me, they weren’t.
They should’ve been, but they weren’t.”
Even colleges were slow to catch onto the talents of a young Zion.
Early on he only had offers from in-state schools.
But after that growth spurt, he gained a lot more confidence in himself as a player.
And with that newfound confidence came 40 point games, state-championships and absolutely
insane, insane, in-game dunks.
People started posting up highlight tapes that would receive millions of views on YouTube
and his parents started to believe in his 5-year-old dreams even more.
His mom told the Charlotte Observer: When you have elderly people come to watch
and they don’t know who you are, and they’re saying this boy will be special and we’ll
see him on TV, you start to think there may be something to this.
In high school, to avoid letting the early fame get to his head too much, his mom would
take away his cellphone at 10pm.
She allowed Zion to watch his highlight videos twice, once when each one was first posted
and once when he was having a bad day.
But she said that he always remained humble through it all.
Even the Washington Post wrote an article with the headline
“This 16-year-old dunker is so dominant, it’s hard to tell if he’s actually good
at basketball”
Well, a couple years later, I have an answer for you.
Yes.
Very good.
But Zion didn’t want to just become known for
his dunking abilities.
In an interview he said:
“If you’ve seen me play you know that’s just one part of my game.
I’m on my ‘LeBron thing’ now: I’m only an in-game dunker.
I’m focused on helping my team win, I want that to be my only focus.”
And don’t get it twisted, Zion is far from just being a dunker.
The kid can shoot too
His team won the NBPA 100 camp championship and shortly afterwards, he tweeted this back
in 2016
And the world started watching.
At 16, Zion had a follow on Instagram from Drake after he posted a pic sporting a Zion
high school jersey.
Aubrey is always watching and seems to have an eye for talent.
Drake wasn’t the only one to show support through the gram.
Odell Beckham Jr. was repping a Zion jersey in a pic, Dez Bryant DMd him, Nate Robinson,
Dwight Howard and more all reached out.
After a 53-point game in high school, over 200 people waited in line just to meet the
young star.
And half of those people were fully grown adults.
The police had to shut down the line even though Zion was more than happy to wait around
to shake all of the hands and kiss all of the babies.
Coaches started to come and see the kid workout.
The team would set up chairs 10 minutes before practice so that nightly spectators could
watch their hour long workouts.
That’s a lot of pressure to perform every single practice.
If someone watched me record these videos during my practice runs, I dunno how well
I would do, or how exciting it would be…
Although, when you can do these types of dunks in practice, I’d pay good money to watch
that also:
That year, he received 36 scholarship offers from all of the top schools.
He was even offered a football scholarship to play tight end at LSU, despite putting
down the pigskin years earlier.
One of the coaches who watched him play was none other than legendary coach, from Duke
University, Coach K. He met with Zion and his parents for an hour before practice to
talk about their program and feel out Zion’s personality.
Zion quickly became a consensus 5-star recruit and was ranked among the top five players
in the 2018 class after leading his team to 3 straight state championships, which were
also the school’s first 3 championships in their history.
He was even given the prestigious award of South Carolina Mr. Basketball, which recognizes
the top senior boys high school basketball player in the state.
Previous winners of the award include Ray Allen and Jermaine O’Neal.
He became a McDonald’s High School All-American, runner up for Mr. Basketball USA and USA Today
All-USA first team honoree.
According to his mom, even with the attention, he would rather be at home playing video games
or watching Netflix than going out all the time.
Him and his mom love to watch Naruto together I
guess Coach K’s meeting inspired Zion because in September of 2018, he began his freshman
year as a Duke Bluedevil where he is averaging 21, 8 and 2 and has already managed to break
Duke’s vertical leap record.
In fact, he jumped so high that his number couldn’t even be recorded at first.
Zion said he chose Duke because "Duke stood out, because the brotherhood represents
a family.
Coach K, he's just the most legendary coach to ever coach college basketball.
Most recently, Zion’s shoe broke mid game after fans paid thousands of dollars to see
the next big NBA star.
Zion left a minute into the game and never came back.
If anything that should show that maybe the kids should be getting paid if people are
paying thousands to see one player.
Let Zion take some of the money home.
But at least we know that money will be no problem for Zion in the coming year because
according to SB Nation, Zion’s NBA rookie contract could be worth about $40 million
over 4 years but it’s his shoe deal that could be worth potentially $100 million according
to TMZ.
As for the future, I know Knicks fans are getting excited about the possibility of having
Zion play for them in the Garden.
He even said in an interview once:
“The New York environment there is nothing like it,”
But I guess we’ll have to wait and see because this is before they were famous.
We’ve covered other athletes on this channel as well as tons of other celebrity bios so
be sure to check those out and make sure to subscribe!
As always, I’m Jeremy Hecht here for you on Before They Were Famous, Dream Good, Live
Better, I hope you have one hecht of a day and I’ll see you in the next video!