Zion Williamson still bothered by what he heard about him.
Fat. Lazy. Failure.
He has become the darling of NBA weight gain after gaining weight while he was recovering from a broken right foot that sidelined him all last season.
It was devastating for Williamson, who was chosen as the overall No. 1 pick by New Orleans in the 2019 draft and was predicted to become an MVP caliber player, but was instead reduced to being a magnet for cruel weight jokes.
Williamson told FOX Sports last week: “What people don’t understand is, even writers and other things, if they have children of their own, imagine if someone were to talk about their kids what they were talking about. I”. “Criticize my body, criticize the way I look. Every time they talk about me, it’s about my weight, about how ugly I look. I don’t even think they realize the kind of impact that can have. yes to you.”
Williamson has changed a lot since then.
He is silent on questions about whether he can lose weight by going to training camp with a significantly thinner body. And he immediately reassured those who doubted he could make a great comeback with a 25-point, nine-recovery performance on his regular-season debut against the team. brooklyn network last month.
After a recent match with Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James talk about Williamson.
“You’ve never seen a talent of his caliber, his speed, his athleticism,” James said. “Like a Giannis [Antetokounmpo]. Like a [Charles] Barkley. Like a Shaq [O’Neal]. Only certain talents come to our league that you’ve never seen before. “
For Williamson, his journey back to being a superstar has been long and painful.
Last season, Williamson fell into a dark hole after suffering an injury in the summer and then suffered a mental breakdown with his legs. Initially, the injury was expected to leave him around five weeks before he could begin to thrive. But in December, imaging showed deterioration in the healing process.
He felt as if a carpet had been pulled from under him. Williamson tried to hide his deep disappointment. But the Pelicans assistant coach Teresa Weatherspoon could see his pain through the papery board he tried to cover up.
“He had a smile that, to me, I knew it wasn’t a smile,” she said. “He took it to throw people away from what he was really feeling.”
Unable to play basketball or do conditioning, Williamson’s weight skyrocketed. He quickly became internet fodder. Photos of him appearing heavy went viral. Reddit forum dedicated to people guessing how much he weighs and mocking him.
“It’s frustrating because with lower-body injuries, that determines how you walk, that determines how you run, how you do your daily activities, and how you move,” Williamson said. “Let the world criticize me like that and all I’m trying to do is make sure my legs are straight? That’s a lot. I won’t lie to you – It’s a lot.”
Williamson immerses himself in listening to music, especially Notorious BIG’s album “Ready To Die,” which he says “changed my life” because it made him feel grateful to be alive. And he relied on the support of his inner ring.
Weatherspoon becomes your soulmate and shoulder to cry on. Pelicans coach Willie Green, who tore his ACL in his third season at the tournament and said his weight has increased from 205 to 230 pounds in that time, understands deeply what Williamson has been through and know how to relate.
Williamson talks about Green. “He would always tell me, ‘Z, if you need someone to talk to, let’s go get lunch or dinner.'”
Williamson’s mother and stepfather are nice, but sometimes they read articles about them and then call their son and ask about his progress, which only adds to his stress.
“I was like, ‘Guys relax, hearing that from you isn’t helping me and it’s making me worse,'” Williamson said. “So when I break it like that, they understand. Once my leg heals, I’ll be back on track.”
Williamson kept his word.
He was allowed to participate in basketball activities in March and returned to the team in New Orleans to cheer them on after a two-month rehabilitation period at Nike’s campus in Beaverton, Oregon. In July, he agreed to a contract extension with the Pelicans worth at least $193 million depending on incentives, though it is said to include weight and body goals.
During the summer break, Williamson trained two days a day in South Florida with Jasper Bibbs, a sports medicine/performance specialist. Williamson will wake up at 4:30 a.m. for his first practice session before returning to training at night, alternating between running tracks, soccer fields, and basketball courts.
“It gave my mind mental discipline, sharp discipline,” says Williamson.
Williamson also hires a personal chef, Jhonas Lewis, to prepare his breakfasts, lunches, dinners and all snacks seven days a week from July to September. Lewis, a former walking soccer player at the University of South Florida, lost 120 pounds just by changing his diet after weighing in at 347 pounds after his athletic career ended.
Lewis initially put Williamson on a detox, then a carb cycling program, in which he eats mostly protein and vegetables and only adds healthy carbohydrates on certain days of the week. The goal was for Williamson to lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass while he was burning what Lewis estimates to be more than 2,000 calories a day through exercise.
The sketch was a great success.
“I don’t know if I should say numbers, but I’ll say this: [He lost] Definitely over 35 pounds,” Lewis said. We lost almost 7-9 pounds a week. By the third week, he started to see results. You can’t pay Zion to wear his shirt. ”
Lewis once made Williamson a turkey bolognese, but he replaced the pasta with zucchini, cucumber, spinach, and arugula. After serving the dish, Lewis explained the ingredients to Williamson, as personal chefs often do to their customers.
But Williamson cringed in disgust. From there, a new understanding was born.
“I said, ‘You know what? Let’s not go there,” Lewis said. “And he said, ‘Yes, you’re right. Don’t tell me, chef. Keep doing what you’re doing. It tastes great.” So going forward, I just stopped telling him what was exactly in [the food]. ”
(Turkey bolognese became one of Williamson’s favorite dishes, so much so that Lewis eventually had to cut him off.)
Lewis goes on to add spirulina to Williamson’s smoothies. He’ll make him mashed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes, adding truffles and garlic for extra flavor. For dinner, he always serves white fish or salmon along with a variety of other proteins. (Some of Williamson’s favorites are the hot lemon pepper honey grilled wings and the black tiger prawns with garlic butter.)
Initially, Lewis would prepare the plate for Williamson to ensure that it was portion controlled. But for this to work, Williamson made it clear that he needed to feel as though he wasn’t on a diet. He asks for family-style eating so he doesn’t feel unduly restricted. Williamson wants to learn how to make the right choices on her own.
Eventually, Williamson’s taste buds changed. He started to like healthier foods and crave less sugar.
Before meeting Lewis, Williamson had some bad habits that he needed to break.
Lewis said: “Whenever he goes and gets food, he has to carry two Dr. “You know what soda does for you? I think by the fifth week he doesn’t like soda anymore because it’s literally fruit and water every day.”
Williamson has lost weight and is now in the best shape of his life.
He’s strong and at the same time agile. He can cut through defenses with the force of a freight train, but can also momentarily spin around to find a loophole or execute a deft shot. He’s an unusual blend of power and speed, a bulldozer that can hit the ball.
So far this season, Williamson is averaging 22.7 points on 52.4% shots, 6.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists in 31.9 minutes per game for the Pelicans, who are in second place. seven at the Western Conference with a 5-4 record. After a 17-month absence, he looks sharper than ever.
“He knew he could be even better,” Green said. “That’s the scary part.”
Williamson truly believes that the world has only seen a fraction of what he is capable of. Now his biggest challenge is not to prove others wrong. It is proving itself right.
“There are a lot of possibilities that I have that I haven’t shown,” Williamson said. “There are abilities that I will show when I practice or play one-on-one, [but] in a game I would think I wanted to be this perfectionist or I would want to feel that I could do every shot where I wouldn’t shoot midway [midrange jumper] or I won’t shoot 3. I’m capable of all that and more. I just had to get out of this perfectionist mindset. ”
Weatherspoon always sees its possibilities. She said Williamson could go in any direction and shoot from anywhere on the field. “People just see that he’s going to the perimeter,” she said, flashing a smile.
James also thinks the sky is the limit for Williamson.
“It’s funny when you hear people say, ‘Just stop him from going left. Stop him from going left,” James said. “It’s just something I’ve heard for so many years with [Manu] Ginobili, just stop him from going left. Lamar Odom, stop him from going left. When you’re great, it doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll find a way. So Zion is on the verge of becoming great. He’s going to be great at this tournament for a long time. “
Williamson has come so far.
He went from being the laughing stock of internet trolls to being the face of the league praising him. He went from the important position of his life to full of hope for his future. He went from worrying if he would ever play basketball again to hoping to become one of the best to ever play the game.
But most of all, he regained his joy. Now that he smiles, Weatherspoon believes it.
“It was a real smile,” she said.
For Williamson, last year was extremely difficult. But it also taught him a very important lesson.
Nothing can be taken for granted.
“If I wasn’t playing basketball was in God’s plan, it was his plan,” Williamson said. “But if it’s in his plan for me to play basketball, then I’ll do it to the best of my ability.”
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Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. Before that, she covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.
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