There's no denying that New Orleans Pelicans rookie sensation Zion Williamson is one of the biggest names in the NBA today. At just 19 years of age, he has taken the basketball world by storm with his insane athelticism and unique combination of size and speed. At this point, it's hard to imagine the time that this phenom was once an unknown nobody.

Zion himself has spoken about his time in the shadows, and according the Duke product, he has to thank Grammy-award winning rapper Drake for giving him a huge popularity boost early on.

It all started when Drake posted this photo on his Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPS56-KhEhD/?utm_source=ig_embed

That was Williamson's high school jersey he had on, which as it turns out, caused quite a ruckus for Zion:

“I think he posted like late at night,” Williamson told Ernie Johnson Monday on the NBA Together Twitter show, via theScore.”And I woke up in the morning to like crazy notifications on my phone. For a second I was like, ‘did something happen? Like something bad happen?'

“It was just crazy at school, everybody asking me, ‘oh my god, like Drake, he wore your jersey! He wore your jersey!” the New Orleans Pelicans rookie said. “And I'm like 16 at the time, and I'm not going to lie, I'm looking like, ‘yeah that's my jersey.' Kinda lit.”

Drake has that effect on the personalities he chooses to endorse, and there have been a lot of them over the years. It was an absolute win for Zion, though, and one that he remains grateful for to this very day.

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