Williams' Flair Brightest Light In NBA Future

By Dwight Jaynes
The Oregonian

SALT LAKE CITY -- He has played just one season in the NBA, and it was a shortened one, at that. But Jason Williams of the Sacramento Kings already is a cult hero.

Just ask the television networks. The Kings, who lost in the first round of the playoffs last season, will be on 20 times this season, including nine appearances on NBC. The Trail Blazers, who reached the conference finals, feel good about getting 13 games on network TV, five on NBC.

And the disparity isn't because of Vlade Divac or Chris Webber, either. It's because of Williams -- who is rapidly becoming the Pete Maravich of his era.

He's not just a basketball player, he's a sideshow. An attraction.

A few thousand fans got lucky Tuesday afternoon at the Rocky Mountain Revue. Williams, who wasn't supposed to play at all for the Kings in the summer league, decided to play in one game.

He played just 23 minutes, but scored 27 points and had six rebounds and three assists. There is so much more to Williams than statistics, though. All of his offensive numbers ought to be multiplied by a degree of difficulty. He should get style points.

"He said he wanted to play," Kings coach Rick Adelman said. "I told him, 'OK, there will be some people there to watch you, so get the long three-pointers and fancy stuff out of the way right away -- then work on the stuff we want you to work on.' "

Fat chance. And deep down, Adelman knows it. There is a need for Williams to improve. He needs to work on his shot selection and learn when to be a little more careful with his showboat passes. But Williams isn't going to change.

You don't want him to change. PLEASE don't change.

"He needs to be himself," Adelman said. "You don't want to mess with that. But he needs to slow himself down a little. He plays full-out all the time. If he'd slow himself down just a little, then shift into that higher gear when he needs it, that would be better for him."

Williams said he's working on it. And he understands how fortunate he is not to be playing for an old-school coach who would scream at him the first time one of his behind-the-back passes didn't hit the mark.

"I've played this way all my life, so it's going to be hard," he said. "But I'm lucky. The coach understands me and I understand him. I want to play in Sacramento forever. It's a perfect situation for me. They let me be myself."

And he's a real piece of work -- a showman of the highest order who doesn't seem to want to do anything the easy way. If he can't wrap a pass around his neck or his back, he probably would rather not throw it at all. The NBA's new emphasis of calling all hand-checking fouls is going to work to his advantage because, with his ability to handle the ball, he's going to be able to beat just about anyone trying to defend him on the outside.

"If the games are called this way, it's just a matter of accelerating past them," Williams said.

He has moves other players haven't dreamed about. The sparse crowd in the Delta Center on Tuesday afternoon was oohing and aahing nearly every minute he was on the floor. He has had a tendency to settle for long three-pointers, even though he has the ability to use his ballhandling and quickness to get much easier shots. The Kings would love him to penetrate more often.

"I've never seen anyone as good with the ball," Adelman said. "And he's so quick. He's faster with the ball than most guys are without it."

And the best part about him is his personality. He brings a joy for the game that fans perceive almost immediately. He's so obviously having fun and it's fun watching him have fun. He's sporting a shorter haircut this summer and it's served to make him look even younger than he did last season. It's like watching some high school kid out there with men, making them all look silly.

"The coaches really didn't want me to play here," he said, looking a little sheepish. "But I need to work on everything. I like to stay in shape and I just love playing ball."

Joy begets joy.

What is the price of fame?  Just ask Williams
 

And now: Jason Williams, the Hangover. There was never any doubt that the bill would come due. That first flush of fame is the most intoxicating thing in the world, and then you are famous, and then what?

This is what:

The word came from a control tower operator, radioed to the Kings' flight home after the overtime playoff loss in Utah on May 16 that ended Sacramento's season. The message was urgent, and so it was quickly relayed to Williams, the team's rookie point guard.

There was a family emergency, the message said. Someone was in trouble.

Details were sketchy; all that was known was that Williams needed to get to a telephone immediately. When he did, racing to the tower at Sacramento International Airport as soon as the team charter landed, the panicked West Virginia native learned why the details were so sketchy: There were none.

A family emergency? Not at all, now that you mention it. The call was a ruse designed to get Williams on the phone with a female admirer.

Welcome to the Show, kid.

They never tell you the part about what happens after you become a national commodity, but Jason Williams, 23, is in the grinding early stages of finding out. He also is about to learn some precious lessons in the fine art of dealing with his own fame.

And near the top, if not Lesson One itself, is that once the world starts watching you, it rarely stops.

Jason Williams is in the process of being watched and, like it or not, he'd better find a way to accommodate the reality. No one in the throng of fans who rushed the airport to greet the Kings that Sunday night, for example, had the slightest idea what had happened to Williams with the faux emergency moments earlier. 

They only knew what they saw, and what they saw was an obviously annoyed player pushing past his adoring constituency -- pushing profanely, according to several eyewitnesses -- and getting into his car and driving away with the windows rolled up.

The scene was chaotic from just about every angle -- players nearly unable to move in their cars because they were enveloped by well-wishers, some of whom were reluctant to let go of a player's hand once they'd gotten a chance to shake it. 

In retrospect, said Kings basketball chief Geoff Petrie, "It was a pretty uncontrolled situation."

"Hopefully," said Petrie, "we'll have some occasions in the future where we have a (celebratory) situation like this. . . . But we'll have to find a better way to handle it. Jason is not comfortable with crowds, and he needs to understand that some of that is going to come with the territory from now on."

It is unfamiliar territory, and perhaps only now is Williams beginning to grasp the dimensions of his fame.

If there's a downside to being shown on ESPN every night, it is that every sports fan in America knows who you are.

Williams, in the words of one Kings official, is coming off a stretch of "some pretty weird fan instances."

Once happy to sign autographs for the kids who knocked on the door of his house, he had to discontinue the practice because the knocking never stopped, and the kids starting looking awfully old. 

Despite living in a gated community, Williams has been awakened in the middle of the night to the sound of people standing outside his windows, screaming for his attention.

It's interesting: Williams' agent, Bill Pollak, lobbied hard for Sacramento as a destination prior to last summer's draft because he felt it was the right small-market fit for the kid from tiny Belle, W.Va. But Sacramento no longer is the NBA's hidden cousin, and that is in large part due to the fact that Jason Williams plays here.

So: Fame. The day after the airport incident, several patrons of a local McDonald's were astonished to see two Kings players, one of them Williams, sitting down for a meal. After waiting for Williams to finish, a fan approached for an autograph.

"I'm not Jason Williams," the young man replied.

There may be days when Williams wishes that were true. For the next several years, it won't be.

Jason Williams:  Shattering All Prejudices

The Sacramento Kings young, great point-guard known as Jason Williams. His name is synonymous with flash, he is our generation's Pete Maravich,
but he is more than that.

To watch Jason Williams with a basketball, would be like watching Monet with a brush, because you are seeing a great artist at work. Basketball is art to Jason Williams, but for him the court is his canvas and the ball his brush. Win or lose the fans always get their money's worth when they come and see Williams play; as he never ceases to amaze with his uncanny passing and ball handling skills. 

There is nothing he won't try, weather it be pulling up from 30 ft. with 19 secs. left on the shot clock, or throwing a full court alley-oop pass, his game knows no boundaries, and his heart has no fear. Jason Williams is a rarity these days; he's someone who plays the game for the love of it, not for the money, and not because he's supposed to.

Lord knows he's not supposed to; standing at a shade over 6 feet, with skin as white as snow, and a southern accent thicker than a McDonald's milk shake, Jason Williams looks and sounds more like a farmer than a basketball player. But that is one of the things that makes him so intriguing; he's the last guy you would expect to be doing the things that he does. 

He's the underdog who made it, the one who didn't listen to all the racial stereotypes, who didn't listen when people told him he was too small to play basketball, he just went out and played, the same way he plays now: without a conscience. And in doing so, he is helping to break one of the many racial stereotypes that plagues our society. 

White men can't jump? Just look at Jason Williams and the way he is able to dunk with such power and ease. White guys aren't quick enough for the NBA? Just look at Jason Williams who is one of the quickest players in the league today. All great, white players play a basic style of game like Bird and Stockton? Just look at Jason Williams, basic is not even in his vocabulary, he can make the most simple of plays look pretty. In short, he is dispelling all the myths about white players, and at the same time giving a lot of kids confidence that they never before had.

Much like Tiger Woods did for golf and African- Americans, Jason Williams is doing for basketball and Caucasians. He's giving them someone they can look up to and emulate, someone who looks like them that doesn't have a 7 foot frame. Already his influence on kids is starting to show; it's showing in the name of Brett Nelson. 

Nelson is also a West Virginia native, and grew up only twenty minutes from Jason's home town of Belle, West Virginia. He grew up watching and idolizing Williams, trying to emulate him, and now Nelson is a highschool senior and ranked as one of the top two point guards in the country (along with, and ironically enough, another Jason Williams who will attend Duke.) Nelson is by far the flashiest player of this years incoming college recruits, some consider him a carbon copy of Jason on the basketball court. And like Williams, Nelson will go to Florida and play under head coach Billy Donovan.

That's what makes Jason Williams style of play so special; it's contagious. It's contagious not only for the people who watch him play, but even more so for his teammates and his opponents. You could just see the way his style and energy rubbed off on his teammates in Sacramento; the fast break, non-stop, run and gun action, the behind the back and alley-oop passes, the pull up 3's from long range, all of it started with Williams, but it carried over to Webber, Maxwell, Divac, Barry, Williamson, etc... 

It wasn't long before the whole team was playing (or at least trying to play) Williams' exciting and care free style of ball, while at the same time racking up triple digits on the score board every night. But even more impressive, was the way it affected his opponents. There were games where Williams would come down and drain 28 foot three-pointers in the face of his defender, and on the very next play his man would come down and try and do the same thing to him.

Guys would find themselves doing and trying things that they never before had attempted in games. There were times in the Utah series where one could see even the steady John Stockton getting caught up in it all; you could see him trying to push the ball, run the break more, and just taking more chances, where the Stockton we all know would slow it down and go into a half court set, trying to execute a game plan rather than let things fly by chance. 

But such is the power of Jason Williams' game. It is only fitting that he was drafted by the Sacramento Kings, because whether Jason Williams is on the basketball court or not, he is truly a royalty.
 

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