Jay Williams
I was born in 1988, and have been a die hard Chicago Bulls fan my entire life. I have had season tickets for the last 3 years. And During my time growing up in the Jordan error and beyond, I estimate I went to 10–15 games each and every year. In other words, I have seen many Bulls games live. I have seen 72–10 season games, Jordan games, Pippin games, Playoff Games, Eddy Curry games, Elton Brand games, and of course legendary Kirk Hinrich games all live. One random game from November 9th, 2002 against the New Jersey Nets though has always been right at the top of my list.
It’s at the top of my list entirely because of Jay Williams. He would have a triple double with 26PTS, 13AST, 14REB, would hit the game sealing 3 with 30 seconds left, and a pair of free throws to give the Bulls a 100–93 Win (and the BIG MACS) over a what would be 50 Win Nets team that went to the finals. This game also featured another triple double from Jason Kidd (25, 12, 11), but the thing that has always stayed in my head was how fast Jay Williams got the ball up the court. I had seats in the lower rows of the 300s (upper deck) just off center meaning every time a ball hander would bring the ball I could also see the shot clock. Each and every time Jay brought the ball up he was running. The shot clock was never below 20 when he entered into the half court. He was just at a different speed than everybody else on the court. This was Jay’s 7 Pro Game, and I would have bet anything he would be a Hall of Famer. Hell, he had just outplayed one in Kidd, and appeared to be coming from an incredible situation at Duke where he had stayed all 4 years. He had all the intangibles, and it was clear he had the game. I bought a Jay Williams jersey on the way home.
As a digression, I loved that Bulls team and man they would have been fun to watch in a pace-and-space error with a different coach. You could have started Jay, Jamal Crawford, Jalen Rose, Donyell Marshall, and Tyson Chandler. You get the pick-and-roll game with Jay/Tyson, and the 3pt shooters in Rose, Crawford and Marshall. Then you could have had a Grit n Grind defensive unit featuring Fred Hoiberg, Trenton Hassell, Marcus Fizer, crazy Eddie Robinson, and Eddy Curry. Sadly, this team was put together in 2002, the coach was Bill Cartwright, everyone was young, and the veteran leader was Jalen Rose (only 30 at the time). I doubt Fred Hoiberg (also 30) was a veteran leader in terms of his ability to relate to all those guys (THE IRONY). Give that team a hard nosed coach (Skiles, Thibs, Paul Silas), and I guarantee that team would have had a better record than 30–52.
But back to Jay Williams. Sadly, the Hall of Fame career was not to be. After his first NBA season, he would get into a motorcycle incident, and never play in the NBA again. It would also become clear that from the outside his life looked to be perfect, on the inside it wasn’t. He didn’t have many friends on the team, didn’t like the way many around him were handling themselves, and by his own admission started “not to care”. This led to immature behavior, the motorcycle accident, and then bouts of depression and addiction. The lesson in his story is to not let outside factors affect who you are and what you gotta do. It is inevitable that we will all go through things that are bad because of things that are outside our control. These are tough situations, but you must remember to stay positive, and keep moving forward. Reacting negatively to these situations will only set you back further, and ruin the progress you have been making. If it’s a situation that is going to be poor for a while, change the course. Stay positive, stay determined, stay ambitious, and no matter how many tough situations you go through, you will eventually reach your destination.
