YouTube Gold: Zion’s Taking Over

Zion Williamson is killing it but it’s more impressive than highlights can reveal.

As the NBA adjusts to Zion Williams and how well he’s playing, an interesting question has come up: is he being taken for granted?

Huh?

Well, it is an interesting question and Jalen Rose takes it up with Mike Greenberg on Get Up.

He points out that Williamson scored 30 points in the paint against the Bucks and calls it “Wilt Chamberlain-like,” which is not the sound of someone taking it for granted.

Stick around after the Zion stuff to see Denver do something unbelievable and not in a good way. Something awful has happened to the NBA when you see that. Good thing Zion is hanging in the paint, really.

Here are Williamson’s highlights from the Milwaukee game and now we’re pretty much seeing the guy we saw at Duke. Check out the block shot he gets on Milwaukee’s Donte DiVicenzo for one but in general, he’s clearly over his injury issues and we certainly hope no one is taking what he’s doing for granted because we’re not sure anyone else has ever done these sorts of things on the regular before.

Among them: New Orleans is starting to use him as a playmaker. We saw that at Duke and Coach K said more than once that Williamson had guard skills but people who focused on his dunks at Duke generally overlooked that aspect of his game.

But his stepdad, former Clemson guard Lee Anderson, saw to it that Williamson was a well-rounded and intellectual player who’s lucky enough to have a freak physique to go along with a first-rate basketball mind.

Check out the photo of Williamson in this video before he started to grow. We’re guessing he had a few bullies back in the day but those days are long, long gone.

Some of the stats in this video are kind of mind-boggling for a player of his age - any age, really - but consider the irony of this stat: his three point shooting is up to around 40 percent now.

As the Denver clip we mentioned above shows, the NBA has gotten to the point with three point shooting where people are just being stupid.

It would be highly ironic if Williamson revives interior play even as his outside shot continues to improve.