by Glenn Stout
Just listen. That Monty could do. It’s what he’d done as a Trail Blazers assistant, after Nate McMillan hired him in 2005. Monty’s was the door that was always open at the team hotel. He was the coach who had players over for dinner. The guy sharing his own mistakes. Because that’s how a real connection grows.
To ask people around the league about Monty is to have your calls returned immediately, to have people cry on the phone, to hear a string of testimonials. Durant, who worked with Monty for a season in Oklahoma City, says, “He’ll hate that I say this, but he’s the best man that I know. And that’s no slight to my dad, my godfather, my uncle, or any coaches that I’ve had.” For Durant, lots of men have tried to fill the role of mentor. Most had lots of advice; few wanted to listen. Fewer still shared the hiccups in their own life. “Monty listens, allows you to vent,” Durant says, “but then he’ll bring you back in and keep it real with you.”
Which is why when Durant needed advice last summer, while trying to decide whether to sign with the Warriors, he called Williams. A man most recently employed by the team he was considering leaving. (Williams didn’t try to sway him: “The only way I could help was to say, ‘Look, don’t let anybody else make this decision for you. Your family or your boys or your shoe company. It’s your decision.’”)
Says Durant, “I was on the phone with him the second I made the decision, right after, right before. A lot of people keep their mind in this basketball bubble and he looked at the whole life. He was there for me as a friend first.”
All those people who flew out for the service? Maybe you’re starting to understand why. They’d come to support Monty and to honor Ingrid’s life. Still, most had no idea what to expect when he spoke.
Watching in the audience, Presti tried to keep it together. He had been the first to receive a call on the night of the accident, awoken at 2 a.m. by the hospital pastor. Presti had first met Monty in 2004, when they were both with San Antonio. Both men had moved on but, as with so many, remained part of the Spurs family. So Presti had thrown on some clothes and hurried to the hospital. In the hours to come, he’d sit with Monty all night, rubbing his back so hard that “it was like I was trying to start a fire.” Throughout, Presti thought about everyone he now represented and how he felt “a huge amount of responsibility to make sure I was handling this the way Pop would handle it. This was on my watch, and I had to live up to the standard that Pop expects of us all. I had to fulfill an obligation that’s much greater than basketball.” In Monty’s case, his indoctrination to the Spurs had come in 1996, when San Antonio traded for him, hoping for scoring. (“Turns out he couldn’t shoot a lick,” says Popovich.) He and Pop didn’t get along at first. Monty chafed at Pop’s tirades, thought he deserved more playing time, more touches. Pop saw him as a role player. Pop also noticed a darkness to the young man. “He was kind of a Debbie Downer, always expecting the worst to happen,” Popovich recalls.
Still, Monty responded to the Spurs’ culture. Bible study with David Robinson and Avery Johnson. Postgame parties at Sean Elliott’s house. In particular he bonded with Duncan, the player he would come to hold up as the standard as a teammate and a leader. A man who became so close with the Williams family that he coined a nickname for Ingrid on account of how she juggled the kids and everything else, and always put Monty in his place: Legend.
Then, before the 1998 season, the Spurs let Monty go. He ended up sitting on his couch in June, crying as he watched San Antonio celebrate the first of five titles, filled with regret. In the years that followed, Monty and Popovich stayed in touch. Despite what Monty may have thought, Pop always liked the young man, thought he was intelligent and a hard worker. “And we’re always looking for those kind of guys,” says Popovich, “because you can’t teach intelligence and it’s pretty tough to get someone to have a work ethic if they don’t already have one.” So when Monty called him in 2004, despondent after bad knees had forced him to stop playing, Pop encouraged Monty to come hang out around the team. See if you like it. Soon enough, Pop slapped a label on him: coaching intern. Meanwhile Pop, a sucker for projects, pushed Monty to take chances, try new stuff. He introduced him to different foods, talked to him about politics, and reveled in cursing around Monty, who never cusses. (“That’s his way of saying I love you,” Monty explains.)
Monty learned what so many others already had. Once you joined the Spurs you were in for life, as long as you operated by certain principles. It was never about you. Pay it forward. Basketball is important, but not as important as family and relationships. In June 2005 the Spurs won their third title, the one that had eluded Monty as a player. As the confetti fell, he stood behind the bench, part of the team but still feeling like an outsider, when he felt someone tackle him from the side. He turned to see a grinning Pop. “You got one,” Popovich shouted. “You missed out before, but now you got one.”
Funny then, that Monty’s most important game as a head coach, on the last day of the 2014–2015 season, was a win over Pop’s Spurs that put the Pelicans in the playoffs. Afterward, as players celebrated and Ingrid brought the kids onto the court, Pop and Monty embraced at midcourt. It felt like a crowning moment.
It’d be easy to see it as karma of sorts: good things happen to good people, right? But in this case, not long after the Pelicans lost to the title-bound Warriors in the first round, Monty was fired. That same day, a TV reporter knocked on Monty’s front door. Monty came out in a T-shirt and spoke for four minutes. He said a lot, thanking the city for its support and the ownership for the opportunity, but one line stood out. “Life’s not fair,” Monty said. “Don’t expect it to be.”
And now here was Monty, a guy who always expected the worst, confronted with about the worst situation imaginable. Yet he stood up on stage, projecting calm as he built to what he termed “the most important thing we need to understand.” That’s what drew the millions who would later watch video of the speech. What led to all those packages and letters, the ones that continued for half a year, flooding the Thunder offices. What led Popovich to decide that he needed to show the eulogy, in its entirety, to his players.
“Everybody’s praying for me and my family, which is right,” Monty said, left hand jammed in his pocket like an anchor. “But let us not forget that there were two people in this situation. And that family needs prayer as well.” He paused. “That family didn’t wake up wanting to hurt my wife.
“Life is hard. It is very hard. And that was tough, but we hold no ill will toward the Donaldson family, and we”—he made a circling motion with his right hand, indicating the whole room—“as a group, brothers united in unity, should be praying for that family because they grieve as well. So let’s not lose sight of what’s important.”
Not long after, he wrapped up with a simple message: “And when we walk away from this place today, let’s celebrate because my wife is where we all need to be. And I’m envious of that. But I’ve got five crumb-snatchers that I need to deal with.”
Monty paused as some in the crowd chuckled. “I love you guys for taking time out of your day to celebrate my wife. We didn’t lose her. When you lose something, you can’t find it. I know exactly where my wife is.”
As he left the stage, Monty didn’t notice the reaction in the room, or if he did, he doesn’t remember it. But those who were there describe a stunned silence. “He was saying to us what we should have been saying to him,” says R. C. Buford, the San Antonio GM. David West turned contemplative. “We always talk about physical strength, but it’s nothing compared to mental and emotional strength,” West says. “You realize your own deficiencies, because I don’t have that type of courage or strength or fortitude to stand as courageously as he did in that moment.” Later, on the plane ride home, Popovich told West and Duncan that it would be “years before we understand the totality of that moment.” Says Popovich now, “I was in awe. I could not believe that a human being could muster the control and command of his feelings and at the same time be as loving a
nd magnanimous.”
The theme at the heart of the speech—forgiveness—was simple, and not unique. Still, the effect was profound. Maybe it was Monty’s delivery; it felt sincere. Maybe it’s because, right or wrong, we don’t always expect such empathy from professional athletes. Maybe it was that, for a message steeped in faith, it never felt preachy. In the weeks that followed, video of the memorial spread, and the reaction was immediate. Oklahoma City staffers made pins embossed with W7—that’s what people always called the Williams family. Donations poured into Faithworks, the nonprofit Ingrid believed in so much, from strangers, from a half-dozen teams, from players Monty had never met.
Meanwhile, concerned friends offered help. All those people he and Ingrid had poured into over the years? “Now we all wanted to pour back into him,” says Durant. His phone beeped constantly, only Monty didn’t want any advice or help. On the exterior, he may have appeared strong, and in control. Inside, he was falling apart. He just wanted everyone to leave.
Everyone who loses a loved one processes grief differently. Some focus on coping mechanisms. Disbelief. Denial. Others become disorganized, acting out of character and making rash decisions. Still others try to “intellectualize” the loss, analyzing the situation leading to a loved one’s death in intricate detail. To Monty, the world lost its grays; everything was either pitch black or blinding white. One moment he was fine; the next, a tiny thing would set him off. His appetite disappeared and sleep became impossible on many nights. He wanted to lash out, even feared that he’d hurt others. So he did what he’d always done and closed up, turning away from the world to only his family. After all, he and Ingrid had never needed help before. He didn’t need it now.
Friends worried.
“I got this,” he told Popovich.
“No, you don’t have this,” Pop answered. “You’re going to have days you’re pissed off and want to punch a wall, and you have to let it go. And other days when you’ll be more together and in both situations you’re going to need people, and friends and mentors, and it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re not a f— island.”
Still, he tried to go it alone. He woke at 5:30 for Bible study, then he got the kids up and was out of the house by 7:30. He wandered the aisles of the grocery store, in search of the darn bread. Fought with the laundry. At 11 he picked up Micah from nursery school, and then he was with the kids all afternoon, driving around Edmond, Oklahoma—to basketball, track, school, plays, doctors. He could handle breakfast and lunch, but many nights, dinner was Chick-fil-A. By the end of the day, he was so exhausted he’d fall asleep by 9:30.
Meanwhile, people kept saying he needed to take time for himself. It made him mad sometimes. Time? He didn’t have time. And what did that even mean, anyway? What was he going to do, go get a massage?
The nights were the worst, once the kids were in bed but before sleep took hold. That’s when the darker thoughts emerged. Popovich remembers talking to him in such moments, and how Monty sounded “like a wounded animal.”
Many days Monty fought the urge to check out. And he might have if it weren’t for Ingrid’s voice in his head. Just take care of the kids. Just take care of the kids.
How in the world is this my life?
The pain and confusion never goes away, this is what Monty’s learned. But it does recede. It’s now January of 2017, and he ticks off the milestones. The first birthday without Ingrid, the first Thanksgiving, the first graduation. All that’s left now is the anniversary of the crash itself.
It’s a warm afternoon and he’s driving back from practice in San Antonio, where he moved the family in June, to get away from the memories in Oklahoma City and to be closer to Ingrid’s parents. He is back with the Spurs for the third time, now as executive VP of operations—“basically a job I made up for Monty,” says Pop. He doesn’t travel, so he can be home at night. After practices he can often be seen playing one-on-one with Duncan, whose friendship has been instrumental in helping Monty regain some sense of normalcy. Eventually, Pop just gave the two of them their own lockers in the coaches’ room, next to each other.
The final month in Oklahoma City wasn’t easy. He got through it on his faith and the generosity of others. It was Lawson, coming over to do the stuff that bewildered him, taking the girls shopping for bras. It was Presti and coach Billy Donovan, checking on him, and Pop calling, and Ingrid’s parents, and Pastor Bil, reminding him that, “grief is the price of love.” It was Tonja Ward, an old friend, pushing him until he hired a cook, to ease his burden. Teams had reached out about coaching vacancies, and the kids had pushed him to get back into it, thinking it would make their dad happy. But it was too soon.
In August he’d lived a dream, serving as an assistant for the U.S. Olympic team. Upon returning from Rio, he developed something resembling a rhythm. Exercise to work out his anger. Focus on being a dad. Work toward being ready to coach again. Be okay delegating: to a cook, a cleaner, his in-laws.
To visit his home now is to enter a whirl of activity. There are the two boys, running outside to shoot hoops in the driveway, Monty stopping Micah—“Put some socks and shoes on, dude!”—and then turning to Elijah. “What do I always tell you?” Monty asks.
“Do. Not. Dominate him,” Elijah responds. Monty nods, makes him repeat it again.
In the kitchen Faith makes herself a snack. Ingrid’s mom, Veda, stops by—Monty says she has become his best friend over the last year. She brims with life, just like Ingrid, laughing and hugging and ribbing Monty because, after all these years of giving her grief, suddenly he’s drinking coffee. (The Spurs’ sports science people told him it was good for him.) Monty lets out the family’s dog, a border collie named TZ.
To walk the halls is to see memories everywhere. Just off the entrance, a large framed picture of Monty with a grinning Popovich in the back of a limo while wine-tasting in Napa with friends, another of Pop’s attempts to force Monty to liven up a bit (“You’re not gonna order iced tea, you’re gonna sit at dinner and try the damn wine and sit and talk with us”). Photos of the family line the walls. All seven of them, most in white, at a picnic in Oklahoma City. Monty and the kids, in the Turks and Caicos, their first vacation after Ingrid’s death. He leads the way to his study. A tiny blue pair of Micah’s shoes rests next to other mementos: nerf rims Elijah has broken, all-district plaques from the girls, Ziploc bags containing first lost teeth. A collection of framed photos of Ingrid occupies one corner. Next to it is his wedding ring. For a while he wore it, then put it on a chain around his neck. But that began to feel wrong. He’s 44 with five kids. He has half his life ahead of him. He knows he won’t stay single forever. She’d be upset if he did.
He puts on a good face, but talking about what happened, as he does over the course of the next three days, often pausing for minutes at a time, remains difficult. “I just couldn’t understand it,” he says. “And never will. But my faith in God never wavered. Just, sometimes your faith and your feelings don’t line up.”
He tries to put the grief in its place, as Pop always advises him to do. Compartmentalize. Still, he sometimes texts her, even though he knows she won’t respond. Other times, he looks up, thinking she’ll walk around a corner. “I can’t say that I feel her presence. I just see so much of her in the kids and so many things remind me of her,” Monty says. Sometimes he goes outside and talks to her. “And I don’t even know what that’s about. I just—I’m not grieving for her, you know. She’s in heaven, she’s with the Lord, she’s like, balling right now. You grieve because you don’t have what you had.”
Moving forward, for Monty, means returning to the bench. He thinks he’s ready, that it will center him. Indeed, he’ll start getting more calls. In March, after making it through the first anniversary of her death with the help of friends, he’ll turn down the top job at Illinois, wishing to focus on the NBA. People around the league will say it’s a matter of time—perhaps by the time you read this story—until he’s offered a head coaching job.
It will be weird, coaching without her. She was his sounding board, “his battery pack,” as West puts it. But that’s the reality of loss. You never fill certain voids.
Besides, he’s still learning from her, even now. For example, Monty hates candy. Has ever since he suffered toothaches as a kid. So he made a rule: no candy in the house. Still, every once in a while, he’d be cleaning and find a bag of Snickers or M&Ms. “What’s this?” he’d ask the kids. They’d hem and haw and finally one of the girls would answer. “Mom lets us have these when you’re gone.”
When he’d confront Ingrid, she’d stand her ground, as she always did. “Back off,” she’d say. “They need to live.”
Now if you go into the kitchen and open the cabinet, you’ll find the stash. Lollipops and chocolate. It’s a small thing, but it’s something. They need to live. So he made certain Lael—the one everyone says is so much like Ingrid and who’d been a rock the week of the funeral, making medical decisions, caring for her sisters, and helping plan the service—went off to college at Wheaton, rather than stay home. And he guards against becoming too protective. By no means does he have it figured out, but he’s trying.
That’s why Monty hates when people call him a role model. He’s just a guy who’s been tested, again and again. A guy trying to make it through, like all of us.
So maybe it’s best to focus on Monty in the real, human moments, like this one. It’s early evening and the winter sun is going down. The boys are getting a little crazy—“Dude, calm down,” he yells. He still needs to check on homework, and pick up the bombs that the dog left out in the yard, and figure out what to do about the pool, which is on the fritz. He turns to a visitor, watching, and apologizes. “Sorry, man,” he says. “I need to go deal with all this.”
And so he does.
