by Jay Williams
He added that he came from the old school where being on time is being late—that you should be here early and should stay afterwards. Mediocrity would not be rewarded, so if you came here, you were coming here to be the best.
Music to my dad’s ears.
It was just the type of challenge I was looking for. At a program like Duke, I would have to scrap and claw for playing time.
At the time, they had seven or eight McDonald’s All Americans on the team, many of whom could potentially be there the following year. They were absolutely loaded, having just completed a 32–4 season in which they finished as conference champions and fell in the Elite Eight to Kentucky, who went on to win it all that year. William Avery was going into his sophomore year, and everyone expected a breakout campaign from him at the point guard spot. Elton Brand and Shane Battier were also going into their second year. The “Alaskan Assassin,” Trajan Langdon, was returning for his senior season. And if that wasn’t enough, they now had Chicago’s pride and joy, Corey Maggette, as an incoming freshman.
After a while, my parents decided to go on a short tour to allow me some one-on-one time with Coach K.
“What’s your goal?” he asked. I was stumped. I had an answer—to perhaps get a college degree and play in the NBA—but I wanted to provide him with what I thought he wanted to hear. I chose to not say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing.
“The school gets so much from you,” he said. “What are you using the school for?” I instinctively said, “An education.” He followed that up by explaining how an education is one of the priorities, but to think about the relationships this school offers. And how to leverage those into something bigger than basketball. Basketball is just a small window, and that’s assuming I was lucky enough to have a professional career. It would be 15 years at best, and then what? What would the plan be after that? He emphasized how important it would be to utilize the connections I would forge to my advantage over the long haul.
I was blown away. I was a 16-year-old kid being talked to like a grown up. Being challenged to think about my future as a man would.
I wasn’t sold completely just yet. After all, only hours before, I had pretty much decided to play for Rutgers.
I had developed this spiel after a while that neutralized any pressure a coach put on me about committing to their program. I would say something along the lines of “I love this. It’s awesome, and it’s an amazing opportunity to be down here. After we see the campus and meet some of the guys, I’m going to go back to New Jersey and take some time to weigh all this stuff out and see where things lie. You know, get my parents’ input, stuff like that.”
It was a good, well-rehearsed routine. But here’s the brilliance of Coach K. He let me recite my lines, and when I was finished he said . . . nothing. It was like one of those awkward pauses where you don’t know if you should jump back in and say something or wait to see if he’s going to say something first.
Then came this gem.
“Well, look, we want you here. I want you here. But if you’re not interested in Duke, then this is something I need to know, because I’m probably going to take this other kid, Todd, from New Jersey.”
Oh, hell, no.
I knew exactly who he was talking about. Todd Billet played at an all-boys high school in southern New Jersey called Christian Brothers Academy. People were always saying how much better Todd was than me. Todd was ranked higher than I was in the New Jersey papers. Todd got invited to the ABCD Camp; I didn’t. We had beaten Christian Brothers a couple of times, and people still said he was better than me. It drove me crazy. I’d been competing with him throughout high school, and here I was again, it seemed, competing with him for a spot on Duke.
This was the genius of Mike Krzyzewski. He first appealed to my intelligence, then to my maturity, and when I was still on the fence, he took one little jab at my vanity, and that closed the deal. I walked out of his office thinking there was no way in hell I was going to lose my spot here to Todd Billet. And it wasn’t something I was losing at all—I was Coach K’s first choice—but somehow it felt like a competition. He read me like an open book and pushed the right button.
I walked out of the office into the gymnasium and saw my dad sitting on a bench next to the scorer’s table, deep in thought as he stared at the retired jerseys hanging down from the rafters.
It was at that moment that I began to hear the crowd roaring, visualizing Coach K on the sideline yelling out instructions to me as I brought the ball up the court.
I walked over to where my father was sitting.
“Dad, I think we should commit.”
“Jason, I’m going to go ahead and say this. I love Coach Bannon, and Rutgers is a great school. But the question I have for you is a question I have been trying to answer for about the past ten minutes. Would you rather be a king among men or a king among kings?”
“I would rather be a king among kings, Dad.”
“Then, son, I don’t know a better place for you than right here. This is where you will get the best education, and you will have no better mentor than that man right there.”
He then told me to look up at the rafters and continued. “I know your number is 32, but you can’t wear 32 here, because it’s retired.” It had been Laettner’s number. “But if you notice, it feels like there’s a missing link. You see, 11 is retired, 33 is retired, 44 is retired, but 22 is not up there. That’s the missing link. You should come here to play, get the number 22 retired, and take your place as a king among kings.”
And that’s how I ended up at Duke.
5
Freshman
Women, parties, booze, and freedom from my parents were all waiting for me down in Durham.
When I landed at Greensboro airport to start the next chapter of my life, an enormous 6’9”, 265 pound man-child was waiting in a beat-up red Ford Taurus to pick me up for our one-hour drive to campus. The driver’s seat was pushed all the way back and the seat was reclined so Carlos Boozer’s head wouldn’t be scrunched against the roof. You just don’t see people that big every day, much less someone of that size who can do everything I could on the court. He was just as good as I was at passing, shooting threes, and doing all the ball-handling drills. We had met months earlier at the McDonald’s All American Game. I liked him from the start.
“Booz” and I talked all the way to Durham, wondering what basketball was going to be like with Coach K. Four key players from the team that had just lost to UConn in the finals would not be returning. Three of them were declaring for the draft early. The Bulls took Elton Brand with the first pick in the draft and Trajan Langdon went to the Cavs at pick 11, while Corey Maggette and William Avery went 13th and 14th, to Seattle and Minnesota, respectively. (Maggette was then traded to Orlando.)
Back then, it was strange to see Coach K lose underclassmen to the NBA. I mean, it never happened. Personally, I was shocked when Avery declared, leaving his starting spot vacant. I’d been sure I was going to end up fighting to earn my minutes, and now the show was mine.
As a result, we wondered how this mass exodus was going to blow back on us. If and when the time came, would Coach K not let us leave? That wasn’t a big concern for me coming in, since I had a lot of work ahead, given that I was going to be learning a position I never played in high school. Carlos, on the other hand, expected to be at Duke for two, maybe three years tops.
“Is he going to change your game?” Boozer asked me. “Because you’re a point guard, but you’re not really a point guard.”
That was something that was on my mind, too. I was always more of a scorer than a playmaker. Now I was going to be expected to run things with everyone looking over my shoulder. Look at the coaches who were on the Duke bench at the time: former All-American Johnny Dawkins, SI cover boy Wojo, and Coach K. What did all three have in common? Former point guards.
I’ll never forget the night when Coach K came to my house with Dawkins for dinner after I had committe
d to Duke. We made a big batch of Polish sausage and invited my high school coach, Mark Taylor, to join us. I was so nervous to have Coach K at my house that I barely said a word throughout the dinner. My parents asked him plenty of questions about his team and his philosophies. They asked Dawkins about his experiences, and my dad wanted to know if he had had to worry about racism in the South.
Meanwhile, Coach was there to talk about expectations and the transition from high school to college ball. When Mike Krzyzewski talks, you listen. He is intimidating and comforting at the same time. He has a presence unlike anyone else. He was talking about how and why players like Wojo and Bobby Hurley had succeeded as PGs. All the while, Coach Taylor is rocking back in his chair, shaking his head.
Finally, Coach K looked at Coach Taylor and asked, “What do you think?” Now, Coach Taylor is one of the most headstrong individuals I have ever met—a competitive ex-athlete who led Fordham to a MAAC championship—with a lot of bravado and never shy about sharing his opinion.
Mark responded, “Can I call you Mike? I’ll call you Mike. Listen, Jason isn’t really a point guard. He’s a two or a three, a slasher.”
Everyone’s jaw dropped to the floor. Was he really telling this legendary coach what’s what?
Expressionless, Coach K firmly replied, “No, he’s not. He’s the top point guard in the country. You should use him that way.”
“Let’s agree to disagree,” Mark said.
I guess Booz and my high school coach were on the same page about me, and we were just going to have to see how that transition was going to work.
We kept talking the whole way down, so excited about what was ahead. Chris Carrawell was going to be the only senior on the team; how would we get along with him? Junior forward Shane Battier was just so damn smart—would we even be able to have conversations with him? We talked about winning championships, going to different parties, and then storming Chapel Hill and taking their girls, too.
It was a requirement that we live on East Campus our freshman year with all the other “frosh.” We didn’t have the exclusive dorms that student-athletes are afforded today. I shared a corner room with Booz, and it was hysterical seeing his 6’9” frame attempting to sleep in a bed made for someone 6’0” at most. Our fellow freshman teammates suffered along with Booz. Mike Dunleavy, Casey Sanders, and Nick Horvath were 6’6”, 6’11”, and 6’10”, respectively.
Coach K demanded we report earlier than everyone else, in July, to get settled in and begin our conditioning program. But we weren’t allowed to move into the dorms yet, so Booz and I had to stay in off-campus housing for a month. Two of our upperclassman teammates—Ryan Caldbeck and Matt Christensen—were kind enough to let us use their apartment about a mile away. They were back home for the summer. Every day, we’d raid their closets and help ourselves to their Duke game shorts, rocking their gear around campus in the blistering July heat.
Months before my arrival, I received this massive book in the mail from Will Stephens, Duke’s strength-and-conditioning coach. It outlined all the exercises I was supposed to do—stretches, warm-ups, cardio drills, stuff like that. But like a typical teenager I just skimmed it, thinking, I just got done with high school. I need a break.
That training manual collected dust for two months. I spent the summer hanging out with friends, getting ready to live the dream, thinking I had it down. They gave us a couple of days to get acclimated, then Booz and I met with the head manager, Jeff LaMere, and his staff, who’d be supervising our workouts. Their job was to coordinate our practices, prepare all of our equipment in the locker rooms and on the court, remind us of our individual workout times, and basically coordinate the whole show.
Will Stephens told Carlos and me that our first workout would be on the track. Now, if you’ve never been to North Carolina in July, let me tell you, it is not the most comfortable place in the world. It’s 100 degrees and the humidity is off the charts. You’re dripping sweat just from walking. Booz had just eaten two or three hot dogs and was finishing the last one as we walked into the locker room. Jeff said, “Boozer, having hot dogs before a workout is probably not the best thing to do.”
Carlos, a gentle giant off the court, had a chip on his shoulder back then. “Whatever, Jeff. I’m good.” We got dressed, put on our blue shorts with the Duke logo, and began to officially commence our college basketball careers. When we went outside, we noticed all of the skill-position players of the football team warming up. Will told us we would be working out with them. And that was when it occurred to me how smart it would’ve been to have opened that thick book.
One drill had us running around the track, and every time we hit a certain mark, we had to do a sprint. I don’t know how many meters, but it was a long-distance sprint. We jogged, then sprinted, then jogged, then sprinted—15 or 20 times. I’d never worked out like this before. The heat was unbearable.
After doing these jog-sprints, I was ready to keel over and pass out. After four, I almost threw up in my mouth. So if I’m struggling, how do you think poor Boozer is doing? He’s from Alaska. There’s no heat like this in Alaska. He sounded like a wounded animal. When people are tired, it’s normal to put your hands on your knees and breathe heavily. His toes were pointed inward, his knees were touching, and he was taking these deep breaths that sounded like a bear moaning in the woods.
“Yo, Booz, you okay? You gonna make it?”
All he could manage was “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”
It’s hysterical now, but at the time I was too tired to laugh. We sprinted with the wide receivers and picked up huge tractor tires and pulled ropes in the sand against each other, all this Navy SEAL shit. Afterwards, we crawled back into the locker room and into this massive bathroom, where we collapsed on the cold tile floor.
That was when Boozer threw up on himself.
Jeff was standing just outside the bathroom door with a knowing look on his face. “See, Carlos, I told you you shouldn’t have had a hot dog.”
“Shut the fuck up, Jeff, and go get me another dog,” Boozer wheezed.
And that was just the first day. Eventually things got a little easier, but it certainly took a lot to adjust to training at that level. If you’re a Duke recruit reading this right now, I have one piece of advice: read the damn book.
The first week of practices was a nightmare. I knew nothing. I couldn’t remember plays, and my conditioning was still a work in progress. J.D. Simpson was guarding me; he was a junior walk-on and was in terrific shape. We were playing five-on-five, and I remember getting the ball inbounded, turning around, and almost colliding face-to-face. His defensive pressure was relentless. I wasn’t even able to bring the ball up the floor. He never got tired.
“Stop!” Coach K barked when I turned the ball over. “Why would you do that? Why would you go this way? Why didn’t you just beat him up the court? Beat him up the court!” And he would do this little driving motion with his right hand where he would rock his fist back and forth like he was steering the top of an imaginary wheel, while yelling, “Drive him up the court!”
In the very beginning, I was discouraged and would put my head down. It took me a while to understand that he wasn’t attacking me but rather challenging me.
I finally beat J.D. up the court and tried to get us into a set, but I was dead tired and could barely gather my breath, let alone my thoughts. I’d never played at such a frantic pace. It was exponentially faster than anything I was used to, but it was normal for a Coach K team.
We went through the routine countless times, each time with Coach yelling out new instructions. “Now beat him with your left.” “No! You’re going too fast; slow down.” “Change speeds.” I didn’t even know what changing speeds meant. In high school, I was able to do things athletically that other people couldn’t.
I struggled handling multiple instructions at once. He even took it to the next level by giving me hand signals. How the hell am I supposed to get the ball up the court, communicate with you, foc
us on the defender, get us in a set, and catch my breath all at the same time?!
“God dammit, Jason, look at me!”
After each practice, I just sat at my locker with my hands massaging my cranium, quietly panicking.
There’s no way I’m going to make it here. There’s no way I’m cut out for this type of shit. If I’d gone to Rutgers, I would have been able to do what I wanted to do. Did I pick the wrong place to come to school?
It was comforting knowing that I wasn’t alone. This was a first for all of us. Boozer, Dunleavy, Casey Sanders, Nick Horvath—we all went through the “spin cycle” together.
I spent the entire year playing catch-up. I was constantly “chasing the rabbit,” learning how to process information at warp speed. I never did so many things on the fly in my life. It was like someone saying to you, “Hey, you’ve never been a CEO before, but we want you to come and run IBM.”
I wasn’t used to a coach grabbing me by the collar of my jersey and being in my face. Or being in a film session where the tape always seemed to freeze to pinpoint something I’d done wrong. There would be 20 or so people in the room, and a Hall of Fame coach would direct his pointer to the screen as everyone watched in horror to see where the red dot was going to land. More often than not, it found its way to the point guard.
Jason, you’re not buying into what we’re trying to achieve defensively.
Your hands are on your knees five minutes into the game. Are you tired?
Shane just fell down right next to you. Why didn’t you pick him up?
Never bend at the knees for a loose ball. Dive, Jason!
Coach K wasn’t the only one challenging me in front of everyone. Shane Battier had no reservations about doing the same. After pretty much every play in practice—games, too—he would get the team in a huddle. It didn’t take long before I gravitated to Shane whenever we were on the court together. He was the smartest player I’d ever met, and he was all of two years older than me. He would remember things I had to do on top of his own assignments.
