Zion Williamson vs LaMelo Ball Was The Perfect Vegas Show Last Night

This was one of the more talked about AAU games in recent memory. The Adidas Uprising Summer Championships are currently being held out in Vegas and we got two of the biggest viral names in the game going against each other last night. 9pm local time saw Zion Williamson vs LaMelo Ball ft. LaVar. It was perfect. I mean, leading into the game we had this:

People who were there talking to college coaches said they’ve never seen anything like it. It drew guys like Damian Lillard, Andrew Wiggins and Eric Gordon to Vegas to watch the game. It even drew a sleeping baby. That’s right SC Supreme’s head coach decided to hold his sleeping son the entire game.

I’m not a dad but I’m sure our guys at Podfathers can talk about how you simply don’t move when you have a sleeping kid. Props to the coach for getting the W both with the wife and the game. We haven’t even gotten to the game yet and you can see how much of a goddamn zoo this place was. I mean this line by Gary Parrish sums it up pretty well. If LeBron is encouraged to stay away, you know it’s a shit storm:

So for the game itself, Williamson and SC Supreme won 104-92. He finished with 28 points as he continued his assault on rims across the nation. He’s the No. 2 prospect in the class of 2018 because of sheer athleticism. That’s not to say he’s not a basketball player – because he is, but he looks to attack off the bounce, never taking too many dribbles. That was the case again last night. When he caught the ball, he attacked with a purpose.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions about Williamson is he can’t play the game. That he is just a dunker. That’s simply not true. He has good defensive instincts, knows how to jump the passing lanes and is an excellent rebounder. He still needs to work on his outside game, but he’s more than just a dude who can dunk. You can see here his ability to be in helpside position, get his hand on the ball and then get the easy dunk. This is who he’ll be at the next level, but he’s absolutely worthy of that No. 2 ranking:

As for LaMelo Ball, he’s another guy who is overshadowed by the social media surrounding him. Yeah, we see him launching shots from 40 feet away, but he’s been doing that his whole life. Sure we saw the game where he was airmailing shot after shot. But he’s a consensus top-20 player in the class of 2019. That’s not too shabby. He’s a year younger than Zion, which you can tell when they stood next to each other. He’s similar to Lonzo in the fact that he needs to work on his handle and become more smooth in attacking in the half court, but he’s more of a scorer than Lonzo was. He finished with 31 points and more importantly he looked the part of that top-20 ranking. He didn’t lose his mind out there. He didn’t try to force the issue too much. He played within the game. When he had some breathing room behind the 3-point line, he shot it. That’s his game. But he wasn’t standing on the other side of the court the entire game. He didn’t pull up from half court time after time. He even had this crafty finish over Zion:

All in all it was a memorable AAU game that Adidas has to be thrilled about. There was a ton of money made at that event and despite it not starting until midnight on the east coast, numbers were high for live streams. Oh, LaVar got a technical, because he’s LaVar.

Here’s the full highlight package from last night thanks to our friends at Overtime.