Before Zion Williamson broke out as a mainstream basketball star at Duke, he was taking basketball Twitter by storm with viral highlights of his dunks in high school games with Spartanburg Day School (S.C.).
But the New Orleans Pelicans rookie gives Drake an assist for putting the name “Zion Williamson” at the forefront of the basketball world.
Back in January of 2017 — almost a year to the day before Williamson announced his commitment to Duke — Drake posted a photo to his Instagram account of him wearing a No. 12 Spartanburg Day School jersey. It was Zion’s jersey, and the rapper tagged Zion in the photo.
In a live chat with TNT’s Ernie Johnson, Zion described that moment. He remembered waking up to all the notifications from that Instagram post and initially thought that something bad had happened.
Zion said:
“I think he posted it like late at night. I woke up that morning, I woke up to just crazy notifications on my phone. For a second, I was like, ‘Did something happen? Something bad happen?’ But no, I went to Instagram, my text messages, everybody was saying, ‘Go look at what Drake posted. Go look at what Drake posted.’ I found it, and I was just like, ‘Man, this is crazy.’ Because whether people know it or not, Drake posted that pic of me, or wearing my jersey, before most of the world knew me.”
It’s almost impossible to imagine what it had to be like for a high school junior to wake up to Drake sporting his jersey. But he obviously handled that added pressure well. The Zion legend only grew from there.
