Life Is Not an Accident

by Jay Williams

  First shot . . . cash.

  Second shot . . . money.

  21.9 seconds left. Tie ball game.

  We had managed to score 10 unanswered points in 32 seconds. Drew Nicholas missed a three-pointer from the corner at the buzzer—overtime. We ended up winning the game by two, 98–96. In our last huddle of the game, Shane was adamant about us not celebrating on their floor after the win. It was important that our opponents knew that we expected to win, no matter the circumstances.

  It wasn’t until the bus ride after that I found out about my mom getting hit in the stands by a glass bottle. Moments later, Chris received the same news about his mother. And Booz’s mom got the worst of it when a glass bottle hit her in the head and gave her a concussion. We were livid. Ready to go back into Cole and fight. If I didn’t like Maryland before, I sure as hell hated them now.

  Nine games later, Maryland would have their chance, this time in our house. In the second half, Booz broke the third metatarsal in his right foot, leaving us completely exposed down low. We lost 91–80, and, to add insult to injury (no pun intended), on Shane’s and Nate’s Senior Night. We were completely dejected back in the locker room. Any Duke loss was treated as if there was a death in the family. Heads down. Tears. Unbearable silence. We thought our chances of winning a conference title, much less an NCAA title, had gone down the drain after getting the news that Booz would be out at least a month. That meant the soonest he’d be back was the Final Four—if we made it that far.

  Our collective confidence was shaken even more the next day at practice. We were in the locker room getting ready to watch tape from the night before when Coach K entered. He looked resolute and energized in a room full of deflated players.

  He began. “If you listen to me, we’re going to win a national championship.” Then, using his patented right-hand up-and-down motion, almost as if he were saluting us sideways, he slowed his speech and lowered his decibel level. “If you motherfuckers . . . listen to me . . . we’re going to win a national championship.” We were all ears. He explained how we were going to play “small ball.” He asked Nate James if he would come off the bench so he could insert Chris into the starting lineup. Casey Sanders and Nick Horvath were given the task of playing with a newfound energy while only rebounding and setting screens. Shane, Dunleavy, Chris, Nate, and I were to think of each game moving forward as if we had a loaded gun, and by game’s end, we were not to leave any bullets in the chamber. Our mentality from that point on was to let it fly.

  Our game plan was mastered during those four days of practice in preparation for North Carolina. The matchup on March 4 against the Tar Heels would be for a share of the ACC regular-season title. Watching sports commentators on ESPN in the days leading up to that game did nothing but motivate our team. Everyone, including the Blue Devil–loving Dick Vitale, had the Tar Heels winning in a landslide.

  When we stepped onto the floor of the Dean Dome, we knew exactly what the strategy was. We were going to run every possession, regardless of a make or miss, turning the game into a track meet. The only question was who would get tired first. North Carolina went big that night with Kris Lang and Brendan Haywood, at 6’11” and 7’0”, respectively, and it played right into our hands. A couple of minutes into the first half, during a break in action, I glanced over at Haywood, who had his hands on his knees and was breathing like he’d just gotten done with a one-hour workout.

  We got this game, I remember thinking to myself.

  By the middle of the first half, the Tar Heels went small and tried to play our style of ball, but it was too late. Battier, Dunleavy, Duhon, and I combined for 89 of our team’s 95 points that evening. I had 33 points against a team I couldn’t wait to dominate. We wanted it more that evening and realized that Coach K was right: with this new style, we were going to win a championship.

  I was averaging around 29 points a game and shooting 51 percent from the field in the early rounds of the 2001 NCAA tournament. When we got to the Sweet Sixteen, I was pitted against UCLA’s Earl Watson. Watson was a tough-nosed kid out of Kansas City who was willing to do anything defensively, short of a felony, to take someone out of their game. He confiscated all of your personal space. Scratching. Clawing. Holding. Arm-checking. Tripping. Pulling your shorts down on the court. That’s just a partial list of Earl’s bag of tricks. During the game, he kept jawing at me, letting me know I was his “bitch”—to be exact. It was just what I needed.

  Thank you, Earl, and have a safe trip back to Westwood.

  After we handed them a 76–63 loss, a reporter brought it to my attention that I had gone on a 19-point run. Not fully paying attention to him, I replied with a typical Duke PC response about how our team had the firepower to go off in spurts like that.

  “No, no, no,” he said, “I mean that you went on a run and scored 19 straight yourself.”

  I did what?

  After doing away with USC a round later, it was off to the Metrodome, in Minneapolis, for the Final Four. I absolutely hated playing there. Depth perception is everything for a shooter, and nothing messes with that more than stadiums seating 60,000. The dome had a huge gap between the backboard and the crowd, and I struggled to gauge the distance between me and the basket the whole time.

  Early in our Final Four game against Maryland, I remember Shane and Chris involved in a ball screen on the right side of the court, with Dun-Dun at the top of the key and me behind the three-point line on the left side. Maryland didn’t trap the ball screen, which left Chris, with the ball in his hand, turning to attack the middle of the paint. As he drove, Dunleavy’s man left him at the top of the key to stop Chris’s penetration, so Chris instinctively kicked it out to him. My defender then decided to leave me to guard Dunleavy, who had an open look. Without hesitation, Dun-Dun rotated the ball to me.

  I caught it and turned to the basket. There was nobody near me, and I was thinking, This three is going in for sure. When I got to the peak of my jump and was just about to release the ball, I suddenly realized I had no idea where the rim was. The entire basket was lost in a sea of fans seated 40 feet behind the rim. I had no choice but to blindly fire away, and I remember the ball hitting somewhere on the glass, like something out of a dodgeball game. Everyone looked at me like Jesus, dude, what the hell was that? I was just thankful it hit a piece of the backboard.

  I missed eight of my nine three-pointers in that game, but the one I did hit gave us our first lead of the game, with about seven minutes to play, after having come back from a 39–17 deficit. We wound up winning by 11. It was Boozer’s first game back and there was zero rust: he dropped 19 on the Terps in just 25 minutes of action. I had 23, while Shane had 25 in an amazing all-around performance. I’m still shocked that we found a way to beat Maryland three times that year. (We also knocked them out of the ACC tournament.) They were a fantastic team and ended up winning the national title the following season. But something was special about the year 2001. Beating them in the Final Four set up the championship game against the Arizona Wildcats, the only team ranked ahead of us in the preseason polls.

  Unfortunately, I played even worse in the biggest game of my life, but our team played well enough to keep us in the lead throughout. This time, we didn’t need a miracle—and a good thing, too, since I had totally lost confidence in myself.

  Up only five points with less than two minutes to go, we needed to cushion our lead as I brought the ball up the court. I locked eyes with Coach K for instructions, at which point he grabbed his shirt with his right hand, tugging it down.

  He was signaling for “L.A.”

  I couldn’t believe he was calling a play for me after the kind of game I’d had. I looked at him quizzically, and he tugged even harder. If he was putting his faith in me, then who was I to question him?

  As Shane set the screen, his defender, Richard Jefferson, chose to completely ignore me as I stood a foot behind the arc. I didn’t blame him, since I had shot 1-of-9 from downtown up to that point. But f
or some strange reason, I saw the basket clearer than I had all night long.

  Nothing but net.

  Our lead was extended to eight, and we never looked back.

  As the final seconds were ticking away, I frantically started jumping up and down with pure exhilaration. Chris was bouncing the ball and screaming my name. I looked over at him, unsure of what he wanted me to do, but he kept waving me over until I finally obeyed. When he handed me the basketball, I was baffled. Without saying a word, Chris pointed toward the ceiling with his right thumb. He remembered that dream I’d talked about at the start of the season, and he made it come true. I threw the ball into the air as the clock ran down to zero, and it felt even better than I imagined.

  We were national champions.

  7

  Decision

  After the game, the floodgates opened. My voice mail was full and my e-mail was overflowing with messages—not with congratulations, but from strangers reaching out, trying to land me as a client. Throughout the year, there were agents, financial advisers, accountants, and all sorts of people reaching out, hoping to work with me in the future. But now things had taken on a life of their own. Around that time, I was named first-team All-American and the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ Player of the Year. I also broke the school’s single-season points record. Most people, including those closest to me, assumed my college days had come to an end.

  My ultimate goal had always been to play in the NBA. Every other day that season, I’d check online to see where I was projected to go in the draft. It’s fair to say it eventually bordered on obsessive. Almost all of the websites had me going first overall. I’d pay particularly close attention to the projections after a bad game—I had nowhere to go but down, and no margin for error. Had it not been for Coach K’s innate ability to keep me from being inside my own head, there’s no way I would’ve ended up playing as well as I did that season. On the court, my focus remained on the team and not on my individual performance.

  Off the court was a different story.

  With my sophomore season in the books and the championship in hand, my parents were having conversations every week with different agents. The 2001 NBA draft was two months away and I was still slated to be the No. 1 pick. Personally, I knew what I wanted to do.

  When we returned to Durham with the national championship trophy, our school held a celebration in Cameron Indoor. Coach K addressed the crowd, then Shane, and as he was wrapping up, the fans began to chant my name.

  “JASON WILLIAMS! JASON WILLIAMS! JASON WILLIAMS!”

  As I stepped up to the podium, I had no idea what I was going to say, so I went with generic praises and thank yous. As I was winding down, the crowd interrupted me with a loud chant.

  “ONE MORE YEAR! ONE MORE YEAR! ONE MORE YEAR!”

  Always looking for others’ approval, I said exactly what they wanted to hear. “I can’t wait to do this again next year.” The crowd erupted.

  I came off the podium thinking to myself, What the hell did I just do? I sat on that stage wondering how I would be able to wiggle out of the commitment I’d just made. I began to panic about what would happen if I went back on my word. The love and support from Duke Nation meant everything to me. Would they ever forgive me if I went with my gut and declared for the draft?

  A few days later, I sat down with my parents and went over the pros and cons of leaving.

  PROS LIST

  1.Money. An absurd amount. $17,286,153 over four years, to be exact, if I was selected first overall.

  2.I would finally have the financial freedom to do what I wanted, whenever I wanted.

  3.Competition. Kobe, Iverson, Marbury, Jason Kidd, and all the other stars I had dreamed of playing with and against.

  4.Jordan factor. Washington had the first pick, and there were rumors that M.J. was planning on leaving their front office to play that season.

  5.Travel. Flying private in Gulfstreams, staying in five-star hotels, renting yachts.

  6.Business. Tapping into the Duke connections K had always been talking about. Finally being able to take care of my parents.

  7.Lifestyle. Specifically . . . the women. I was with Noelle at the time, but I wasn’t exactly a saint. The combo of money and fame would drastically change things in that department.

  8.Leadership. Shane was leaving, and it was going to be my team.

  9.Injury. What would happen to my draft stock and earning potential if I stayed another year and got hurt?

  CONS LIST

  1.Maturity. Physically, I was ready. Mentally? No shot.

  2.Family. My parents would look to manage “the family business,” which was another way of saying they’d be managing me.

  3.Money. It can do as much harm as it can good.

  4.Friends. Who would I be able to trust? How many “friends” would come out of the woodwork looking for a handout?

  5.Distractions. Women and fame would for sure get the best of me.

  6.Education. I had promised my parents I would get a degree.

  7.Coach K. Losing what would be another invaluable season under his wing.

  In my mind, whichever side won out, it didn’t even matter to me. I was playing the role of the good son, appeasing my parents at every turn. Rightfully so, they were adamant about me weighing all my options, which included the inevitable sit-down with my head coach.

  Sitting in the common area of K’s office—this one at least three times the size of his former—we spoke about a number of things: where we thought my development as a player was at the time, things I needed to improve upon (i.e., my abysmal free-throw shooting), maturity and leadership skills. We talked about how different the team culture would be, going from a winning program ripe with tradition to a losing NBA franchise. We broke down all the options, as if we were drawing up a play. Except this wasn’t a game. This was my life.

  He said, “Jason, I want you to take all this information and process it. Once you leave this room, I want you to truly think about what it means to be different. I don’t want you to follow the norm. I want you to blaze your own path. I want you to be a pioneer.”

  I always looked to my parents and Coach K for guidance, and all three encouraged me to make this momentous decision on my own. It was a given that my parents would feel let down if I chose to leave without first getting my degree. Education meant everything to them. And K truly wanted what was best for each and every one of us. He loved me like a son. My staying another year would surely have given him a better chance of winning another national title, but even so, I am certain that my best interest was his only agenda. His call was that I would stand to benefit from another year learning how to lead. And he was right.

  But I still should’ve left.

  And he should’ve told me to go.

  I know Coach K would’ve supported whatever decision I made, but it was a very different time then. Players didn’t normally leave him as underclassmen. But when you’re projected to be drafted in the lottery, let alone the No. 1 pick overall, you have to go. Time has proven this to be the case. Today, even Duke is not immune to players leaving early in this one-and-done era. Luol Deng, Kyrie Irving, Austin Rivers, Jabari Parker, Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow, and Tyus Jones are all “guilty.” The present-day Coach K is different—for the better—than the 2001 Coach K. Back then, he wasn’t as willing to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of college basketball the way he has so successfully done today. And he has two more national-title trophies to show for it.

  Financially, it’s almost always going to be in the player’s best interests to start his pro career as early as possible. The cap on a player’s first contract essentially makes it a paid internship—a well-paid one at that—and the sooner it expires, the sooner the really big money kicks in. Pro life is always going to be an adjustment no matter when you begin it—whether you forgo your sophomore year or stay for all four. The adjustment is jarring for young men of all ages.

  Overcome with guilt
and the desire to get a college degree, I decided to stay for my junior year. We figured out how I would be able to compile enough credits to graduate in just three years—by spending the next summer taking courses. I would need to take three more summer semesters, which was a small price to pay for having a degree from Duke University for the rest of my life.

  There would be pressure. Anything less than another national championship would seem like a disappointment. The season before, we went the entire year without falling below fourth in the polls. We ended up finishing the regular season 26–4, stomped the Tar Heels in the ACC final, and went on to win all six of our NCAA tournament games by ten or more points on our way to a title.

  We were the preseason No. 1 in the polls, and I was expected to be national player of the year again. We had a strong team returning, which definitely played a part in my decision to stay. Chris and I were back for more, with freshman combo guard Daniel Ewing coming off the bench; Dunleavy and Dahntay Jones, who had transferred from Rutgers, were our forwards; and Booz, Casey Sanders, and Nick Horvath were back at center.

  As much as I respected and loved Coach K, there were times when I was angry with him because I didn’t understand his thinking. During games, his intensity knew no bounds, and whenever he yelled that my best wasn’t good enough, it took every ounce of me not to respond to him with what was really on my mind. I knew better than to shoot my mouth off, but I had to do something to release the frustration and prevent my head from exploding, so I took it out on my opponents. The more Coach K got in my face to challenge me, the more I would try to kill the guy who guarded me on the court.

  Looking back, I get it: K pushed my buttons because he knew I played better when I was angry. I don’t know when he figured that out—maybe from watching me in high school or from observing how I responded to his various motivational efforts during my freshman year. Who knows? What I do know is we won a national championship, and I became a two-time national player of the year.