Zion Williamson was reduced to a spectator on Wednesday after suffering a mild knee sprain in the opening seconds. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

When Zion’s shoe blew apart, college and pro basketball blew up.

Three things happened after Duke’s lopsided loss to Carolina in Cameron Wednesday night, two of them captured on video.

First came a blow-by handshake from Mike Krzyzewski to Roy Williams, coaches who always chat cordially before and after games. The second was Coach K’s press conference, where he seemed stunned and a bit disoriented.

Three is only conjecture floating around the Internet – when Zion’s parents went to the locker room after he left the court, they told the Duke staff at halftime they didn’t want their manchild playing anymore that night. So they all watched the second half together on TV.

Following was a barrage of media chastising college basketball for putting players’ futures at stake while paying them nothing of the millions people with no athletic talent make off them. Surprisingly, former and current pros from Scottie Pippen to Isaiah Thomas chimed in that Zion should “shut it down” for the season and get healthy for the NBA draft and the gazillion-dollar shoe contract he will have signed by then.

Potentially the most transcendent star since Michael Jordan, Williamson is the new poster child for the NCAA’s alleged greed and misuse of the term amateurism. To be an amateur used to mean no one gets paid for your services beyond a “volunteer” high school or recreation coach.

But with college basketball burgeoning into a billion-dollar industry, the hypocrisy over colleges, TV networks and, yes, shoe companies making all the money from rising stars like Zion has about hit the boiling point. By comparison, Carolina looked far more innocent.

With upperclassmen starters for a fourth straight ranked team, the Tar Heels ran circles around the bewildered Blue Devils who were unable to play the game half as well as seniors Luke Maye and Cameron Johnson; despite going 1 for 8 from 3-point range, they still shredded Duke’s inside defense for 56 points on a staggering 73 percent shooting.

That played a lot better than the other shoe dropping on the one-and-done way and all the perils it presents.

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