‘Man, this is home.’ Zion Williamson plays in Charlotte for first time in NBA career
Zion Williamson remembers the last time he was in the Spectrum Center.
March 16, 2019. There were balloons and backward hats and snipped nets. The Duke phenom led his team to a 73-63 win over Florida State to win that year’s ACC Championship game — the end of a gritty, three-game run and a milestone in an emotional few weeks for the Duke star, who was coming back from a knee injury that caused him to miss six games thanks to a shoe breakage that resides in Carolina basketball lore.
Seated in the Spectrum Center in uptown Charlotte nearly four years later at Friday morning’s shootaround before the Pelicans-Hornets game, many of those emotions came back.
“Emotions were high,” the 6-foot-6, 284-pound Pelicans forward told The Charlotte Observer. He smiled, “I remember I was very emotional because my mom helped me a lot during those six games that I missed. So I’m looking through the crowd, like, ‘Dang, where’s my mom at?’ ”
He added: “The arena, the aura of the gym, it brings back a lot of good memories.”
Friday’s shootaround was the first time in Williamson’s NBA career that he was preparing for a game in Charlotte. The No. 1 overall pick in 2019 has missed a few Hornets matchups because of injuries. The only time he has played against Charlotte, in fact, was in January 2020, when he scored 26 points in 34 minutes in a 118-110 loss — but that contest was in New Orleans.
Williamson is one of the many players with ties to the Carolinas in the contest. Brandon Ingram, the Pelicans’ smooth-scoring star, is from Kinston, N.C., and played at Duke. Dereon Seabron played at N.C. State. Trey Murphy III grew up in Durham. Devonté Graham is a Raleigh native and spent a bulk of his NBA career as a Hornet.
“To see guys from North Carolina and South Carolina, it just tells you how much talent there is around the area,” Ingram said on Friday morning, as North Carolina rapper J. Cole’s “KOD” hummed in the background. “What we really breathe is basketball.”
Carolina ties run deep for the home team, too.
Big men Mason Plumlee and Mark Williams are former Blue Devils. Cody Martin is from Winston-Salem and played at N.C. State. Bryce McGowens is from Pendleton, S.C.
And Dennis Smith Jr. is from Fayetteville and played at N.C. State — playing his own way into North Carolina basketball lore when he slammed home a fastbreak dunk that punctuated one of the program’s most thrilling upsets over Duke in January 2017.
“To be here, playing for a North Carolina team, in North Carolina, that’s exciting for me,” Smith told The Observer on Friday, a few hours before the team’s home opener. The guard is fresh off an impressive performance against San Antonio on Wednesday, where he scored 12 points to go with four assists, two rebounds, two steals and two blocks.
Smith said he’s particularly excited to play against Murphy. The two have known each other since they were young. Smith scrolled through Instagram on Friday to find a picture the two took after a workout in 2014 — Smith, then in high school, towering over his 5-foot-5 mentee. (“I was taller than him back then,” Smith said of his now 6-foot-8 friend. “It ain’t close now, but back then I was taller than dude.”)
“In North Carolina, the guys do a really good job about reaching back and giving advice,” Smith said. “You know, there’s nobody hating on nobody, as far as I know. When I was young, Chris Paul would reach out to me and try to lend advice, and I was always receptive to that. Steph Curry would do the same thing. John Wall did the same thing for me, he was definitely major for me. ...
“I feel like, whenever you’re confident with yourself, you don’t hate on anybody. And North Carolina has a lot of confident hoopers, so you know we’re always showing love to each other.”
Same goes for the South Carolina side.
“These past couple years, it has shown that South Carolina has been on the come-up,” said Bryce McGowens, a second-round draft pick in 2022 who played at Wrenn High School before rising to one of the best players in S.C. at Legacy Early College in Greenville. “A lot of talent. A lot of great players coming out of South Carolina.”
McGowens then laughed: “Hopefully, we’ll take over the league one day. It’s just been amazing to see guys from the Carolinas come out and show out.”
Williamson, as well as other Pelicans players, presumably, invited a lot of family and friends to the Spectrum Center on Friday.
The Carolinas are home for him, he said.
“We were in Brooklyn, I had just played against Nicolas Claxton, and I was telling him, ‘Man, it’s great competing against you,’ ” Williamson said. “That S.C. pride thing, knowing where we came from, to see each other on this NBA stage.”
He added: “I remember getting off the plane yesterday, and I was like, ‘Man, this is home.’ ”
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 2:49 PM.
