They WILL gather Saturday evening for an unprecedented college basketball feast, the celebration of a man who survived and thrived over more than four decades at one school. Mike Krzyzewski will coach his final game at Duke against the North Carolina Tar Heels (who else?), and every former Blue Devil in the house will know that one former Coach K player stands out as the most unique of all.

Zion Williamson spent only one season at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and yet he left an indelible mark. The one time he faced the Tar Heels at Cameron, Williamson’s star power was strong enough to attract former President Barack Obama to the game, and Williamson’s 6-foot-7, 285-pound frame was powerful enough to blow out his Nike sneaker when planting his foot.

Obama pointed at the downed player that night and said, “His shoe broke.” The Internet broke too. Williamson had that effect on people.

Williamson was going to take the generational handoff from LeBron James and become the NBA’s Next Big Thing. ESPN’s Jay Bilas, leading scholar in all things Blue Devils, said he couldn’t wrap his head around the sight of a young man so big who had a 45-inch vertical leap and a dancer’s feet.

“There’s never been anybody like this to play basketball, ever,” Bilas said.

But three years later, the 21-year-old Williamson is not playing basketball for the Pelicans, or anyone else for that matter. In fact, the No. 1-overall pick of the 2019 NBA Draft has missed 122 out of 207 pro games, including the entire 2021-22 season. His conspicuous weight gain during his injury rehab was just lampooned by a Mardi Gras float, and his failure to contact his new teammate, CJ McCollum, was just ripped by former teammate and fellow Blue Devil JJ Redick as the act of a detached player with no investment in his team.

Knicks fans, who were initially heartbroken by the bad draft-lottery bounce that landed them the third pick, and the “wrong” Duke star (RJ Barrett), now believe they might’ve dodged a disaster. The same goes for Grizzlies fans who ended up with the No. 2 pick, Ja Morant, currently making a spirited bid for the league’s MVP award at age 22.

So nobody needed the somewhat promising bulletin the other day that Williamson’s fractured right foot is showing “improved bone healing” more than Pelicans fans did, though the team threw a little cold water on its own report by conceding the third-year player remains out indefinitely.

This is a sad story that doesn’t need to have a sad ending, of course. Joel Embiid missed his first two seasons with foot injuries, and now is challenging Morant in the MVP race. Blake Griffin missed his entire rookie season with a knee injury, then made five consecutive All-Star teams. It’s possible that Williamson will recover in short order, maintain healthy weight and body-fat levels, and return to his All-Star form from last season, when he averaged 27 points and shot 61 percent from the floor in 61 games.

That would be the way for true sports fans to root, since we all got in the fan business to watch special athletes expand the boundaries of human achievement. Williamson was not a good NBA defender, and his defensive rebounding could’ve used some work. But when healthy, he seemed explosive enough to be exactly what Bilas called him — a basketball player unlike any we’d ever seen.

His former coach, Stan Van Gundy, adored him, even if some Williamson family members didn’t adore Van Gundy. After he was fired last June, Van Gundy told the “STUpodity” podcast this about the world-famous prospect he left behind: “Zion’s no coach killer. He’s a guy who’s gonna help you win a lot of games. He plays the game the right way. One of the things I’ll miss is the opportunity to continue to coach him. He’s so unique in the way that he plays the game and the things that he can do, it really gets your mind spinning as a coach and you have a lot of possibilities in what you can do with him. That was fun to explore.”

They all loved Williamson at Duke, too, since the day they landed him against the odds. North Carolina’s Roy Williams had the last visit with Williamson in his South Carolina home and thought it would come down to the Tar Heels or Clemson. Krzyzewski and his staff were watching on TV when Williamson announced he would play ball in Durham instead. “We got up,” said Duke assistant Jon Scheyer, Coach K’s appointed heir, “and we tackled Nate James.” James had been assigned by Coach K to secure Zion’s commitment.

Williamson failed to reach the Final Four in his one-and-done season, and yet he was all that he was advertised to be on those social media dunkathons that made him a high school legend worthy of more than a million followers on Instagram. He played with a generosity of spirit that appealed to the masses and helped earn him a $75 million Nike deal. He was the NBA’s next can’t-miss megastar, until he wasn’t.

Williamson hasn’t just been detached from the Pelicans, he has been detached from the sport and all those who want to see it played at its highest level. So on the day his legendary Duke coach says goodbye, here’s hoping the most unique Blue Devil of all says hello, again, much sooner than later.