Zion Williamson adds to his trophy collection with Wooden Award

It was a banner night at the college basketball awards show for Zion Williamson, who racked up the hardware as the sports’ marquee attraction all year long.

In news that should come as a complete shock to absolutely no one who watched a second of college basketball this season, Duke’s Zion Williamson cleaned up in the postseason awards categories. Williamson capped off his historic season with the John R. Wooden award, which is named after the legendary former UCLA coach and given to the sports’ best male and female players every year.

While the numbers alone (22.6 ppg, 8.9 rpg, 2.1 apg, 2.1 spg, 1.8 bpg) showed how worthy Zion was of the award, they only tell part of the story. Williamson simply took over every game he played in, shooting a ridiculous 68% from the field and making highlight reel plays on both ends of the floor.

The true value of Williamson was displayed when he suffered a knee injury in late February. Despite having fellow Wooden finalist R.J. Barrett and two other talented freshmen around in Cam Reddish and Tre Jones, Duke went just 3-3 without Williamson, showing how important he truly was to the Blue Devils.

The next step for Williamson should be the NBA Draft, where he will be the top pick and a potential franchise changing presence for whichever team is lucky enough to have the magic combination of ping pong balls. While Reddish and Barrett have already declared for the draft, Williamson continued to be coy about his future, including a couple of hilarious exchanges at the awards show like this.

While we have plenty of time to obsess about Zion’s future, it is worth mentioning that Williamson’s season at Duke was historic enough to make him the sixth Blue Devil to win the Wooden Award. Williamson beat out Barrett, Michigan State’s Cassius Winston, Murray State’s Ja Morant, and Tennessee’s Grant Williams to take home college basketball’s highest individual honor.