Zion Mania? It’s only new by a matter of degree.
Before Zion Williamson, there was Allen Iverson, Grant Hill, Shaquille O’Neal, Patrick Ewing and...
Rex Chapman, coming out of Owensboro, Ky., to Kentucky’s campus and then to an NBA expansion team in Charlotte. That was back in the late 1980s before Twitter or Instagram, or the technology to record video of anything a fan saw, good or bad, with a cellphone.
But the outsized exposure and expectations Williamson has experienced as a Duke freshman — he will play Thursday in Charlotte in the ACC Tournament — is particularly familiar to Chapman from his time as a Wildcat and then as the first draft pick of a new NBA team.