Zion Williamson is a person who needed someone in his corner.
He didn’t need someone telling him he needed to lose weight. He didn’t need people worrying about whether or not he would regain his vertical pop. What he needed was someone to ask him if he was okay, and when they heard that the answer was no, he needed consolation.
Not everyone has someone like that, and it can be especially hard to find in the workplace — especially in an environment that can be as stressful as the NBA. Fortunately, however, Williamson found that Pelicans assistant coach Teresa Weatherspoon could be one of those people.
Howard Beck wrote a fantastic profile about Williamson, and he included an incredibly powerful anecdote about the work the assistant coach did to help.
Weatherspoon told Beck that Williamson confided in her during his darkest moments last season (via Sports Illustrated):
“At that most vulnerable moment, it was important for me to let him know that he’s a great young man and he’s worthy of those things that you work for,” says Weatherspoon, the former WNBA star and Hall of Famer. “I could see a young man fighting to find his way, had lost all sense of direction. And I just wanted to reach out at that moment and to let him know: I didn’t care about basketball; I cared about what he was feeling, what he was thinking, how difficult were things for him at that moment.”
She adds, “I didn’t want him to feel alone. And when I tell you there were some dark days for that young man, there was some dark days. . . . It was much bigger than basketball at that point. You didn’t want to lose a young man.”
Read that again and let it sink in for a moment before the season begins.
Weatherspoon, like Williamson, is an accomplished athlete. She is a former NCAA national champion, a FIBA gold medalist, an Olympic gold medalist, a five-time WNBA All-Star, and a two-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year. She played almost all of her WNBA career with the New York Liberty.
Basketball, at that moment, didn’t matter to her. She didn’t want to lose him. Williamson expressed his gratitude to receive that sort of help from the New Orleans assistant, who joined the organization in 2019:
Of Weatherspoon, Williamson says, “She saved me from so many kind of like mental breakdowns. When you see somebody cry for you because of what you’re going through—she cried for me. She didn’t have to do that. . . . And just seeing that made me realize, Wow, I really have somebody special in my corner.”
Williamson says that Weatherspoon is “like my big sister” and her help should make next season — and beyond — much easier for the former No. 1 overall pick.
This is a beautiful tribute to Weatherspoon, who was considered a candidate as head coach of the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA. Her name is one worth watching in NBA and WNBA coaching circles.
