Duke’s Zion Williamson is already the biggest attraction in college basketball

Duke freshman phenom Zion Williamson is the biggest name in college football and commands your attention with his highlight-reel dunks.

The Duke Blue Devils have grown accustomed to having one of the most famous faces in all of college basketball as part of their university with head coach Mike Krzyzewski on the sidelines for the last 38 years.

However, this season the biggest star for the Blue Devils will be on the court as South Carolina native Zion Williamson enters his freshman season at Durham.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no access to WiFi, you have come across Williamson in one way or another. The high-flying 18-year-old turned heads on smartphones across the world with his combination of bounce and force on his aerial assaults.

Listed at 6-foot-7 and 285 pounds, Williamson has the athleticism of prime Vince Carter and the strength of Ben Wallace with the physical makeup of Charles Barkley. To say that we have never seen a player like Williamson before would be an understatement.

Even though Williamson is larger than life in some basketball circles, he did not top any of the recruiting rankings for the Class of 2018. He ranked fifth overall in Rivals, Scout, and 247Sports, and was placed behind only Duke teammate R.J. Barrett in ESPN’s Top 100.

His recruitment was highly tracked and many thought that he could potentially remain in-state at South Carolina or Clemson (his step-father played for the Tigers). However, “The Brotherhood”–and a group chat with future teammates Barrett, Cam Reddish and Tre Jones–proved too appealing for Williamson to turn down.

Throughout the course of the Blue Devils’ preseason action, it seems as if that was the correct choice for Zion.

During their three-game exhibition tour in Canada, Williamson averaged 29.7 points per game and a team-high 11.3 rebounds per game. Williamson also shot 64.5 percent from the field, including a respectable 33 percent on 3-pointers. It was more of the same from Williamson in the two preseason games (26 PPG and 8 RPG in 25.5 minutes per game).

However, as noted previously, Williamson isn’t the lone consensus top recruit that will be gearing up for his first year in Durham this season.

Barrett and Reddish are multi-faceted wings capable of playing on or off-the-ball and are much more accomplished perimeter shooters. Jones is looking to recapture the magic that his brother Tyus found with Duke when he led the Blue Devils to a national championship in 2015 alongside fellow five-star prospects Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow–and a little know freshman named Grayson Allen.

Williamson could use a similar run in March to cement himself as one of the top players in the 2019 NBA Draft.

Without a consistent outside shot, the main question that will affect Williamson’s draft stock is what position does he play. Positionless basketball has become more common across the league, but Williamson’s profile will truly put this movement to the test. At 6-foot-7 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan, he fits the bill of swing forward, however, the lack of perimeter shooting could cause spacing issues.

And though Williamson is more athletic than Draymond Green by a wide measure, Green has a three-inch advantage in regards to length and Williamson has yet to show the type of defensive aptitude that Green displays as a small-ball five. Surely though, Green at 18 was far from the perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate we see today.

Development is going to be the key to Williamson succeeding in the NBA. In spite of being renowned for his dunks, Williamson is truly a jack-of-all-trades on the court. He possesses phenomenal court vision and uses his athleticism and size to make passes that most players would be unable to.

On the other end of the floor, he uses his athleticism for functional results. He’s a beast on the glass as previous stats indicated, and he awaits passes in the lane like a tiger on the prowl. Overall he creates chaos in the blink of an eye. One mistake leads to a SportsCenter Top 10 highlight slam dunk.

Williamson enters college as a known quantity to many, however, there remain some unknowns about him that he’ll have the next few months to answer on a national championship contender in Duke.