Yahoo Sports Scott Williams: I hope MJ and Pippen sit down together and work things out
Scott Williams might not be a name that immediately resonates with younger fans, despite his 15-year career in the NBA. However, he won three rings with the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls.
Williams recently authored a memoir, titled Through the Fire, detailing his life and career. His journey wasn’t devoid of tragic experiences. Amidst the highs of being a decorated athlete, he faced a devastating blow during his sophomore year at the University of North Carolina as his father shot and killed his mother, then turned the gun on himself
Williams recently spoke with HoopsHype about his trials and tribulations, playing with one of the greatest players ever, and more.
There was a pivotal point in your career there where Michael Jordan and some of his teammates came down to North Carolina to scrimmage, and you participated. Can you give us a glimpse to what transpired there?
Scott Williams: Yeah, I don’t remember exactly what the timeline was. But pretty much my entire college career I had a bad right shoulder that would dislocate sometimes during games, and it scared a lot of the general managers off from drafting me. They [thought] my shoulder wouldn’t hold up through the rigors of the NBA, then they would miss out on another protective healthier body.
I took it as a slight because I never missed a practice or a game but as luck would have it, shortly after the draft, we had [Michael] Jordan playing in a basketball game in Charlotte, which was about an hour from Chapel Hill while I was at that summer, and he did it for some underprivileged kids that his buddy Fred Whitfield had put together. I weaseled my way with an invitation to the game because Jordan would bring a lot of his pro teammates up and guys from the Charlotte Hornets would come and play and some good local college guys would play in the game as well.
So Jordan, the Carolina guy, he put me on his squad and I got a good physical strong game. Jordan addresses the squad, and he says, [if] you’re not here to play a real, physical brand of basketball, there’s the door you can leave. It’s kind of funny because all these guys were pro guys, but we’re not getting paid for this. It’s just to support him. But that’s what I needed because a guy named JR Reid, who was my teammate for three years in North Carolina, was on the other squad and he gave me a good strong physical game. And that allowed my best talents to show through.
I was a banger, defender, and shot blocker. So I got a rebound late in the basketball game, an offensive rebound, and found Jordan over the right corner and delivered a strike to him and he knocked down what was essentially the game-winner. And as he’s leaving the arena pulling off in his little red Corvette, Fred Whitfield tells the story to a friend of mine that Michael Jordan calls Jerry Krause, and says you should give Williams a look-see. And so Krause called my agent and they gave me an invitation to try out for the rookie summer program.
So just like that, Jordan calls up Krause and that’s it? Did Jordan tell you he was calling the Bulls?
SW: The funny thing is this story was never told to me until six years ago. I never knew about this call that Jordan made to Jerry Krause. It was all brand-new news to me after my career was over. I don’t think Michael Jordan makes that call to Jerry Krause if he doesn’t feel like it’ll help him. You got to remember that Jordan hadn’t won a championship yet. So this is the summer of him getting knocked out of the Eastern Conference Finals, Game 7 for the third year in a row. So I think that the way the Pistons played, that big, physical strong style of basketball was still fresh in his mind. And he sees me out there as a young cat banging with these pros. And he goes, that’s somebody that I could use to keep guys like [Rick] Mahorn, [Bill] Laimbeer, and [John] Sally off their asses so to speak.
[On the Bulls] Horace Grant was rounding into form. He was going into his fourth year. So really the big guy, the prime development was Bill Cartwright, aging but serviceable. But the other young bigs, Will Purdue and Stacey King, had not yet proved themselves. So I was kind of fortunate from that standpoint, that they needed some help on the inside. Right place, right time. [If] I don’t play in that game, I don’t think he’ll make that call. He’s not doing the scouting report scouting for talent like that. I just happen to be right in front of him.
So he makes the call, but you still need to go through summer camp, and then training camp before you secure a contract. What was that whole process like, not knowing what your future was going to be?
SW: Yeah, so summer camp was back in the day. It wasn’t Vegas, it wasn’t televised. It was at Loyola Marymount, maybe 50 people in the stands. So it was a different kind of thing. But I did really well there. You know, Phil Jackson wasn’t the head coach, I can’t remember if it was Jim Cleamons, or one of the other assistants that coached the squad, but I did just enough there to impress them to get invited to veterans [training] camp in October, and there was about eight of us trying out for one open roster spot on the squad. They kind of wanted another big, so it really came down to me and a guy from Georgetown.
So I felt as though my knowledge of the game gave me an edge. Because I picked up the triangle offense, which was a new offense, at least was new to NBA and college kids. But Dean Smith, my college coach at North Carolina, he didn’t just roll out the basketballs for All-Americans. He really took a lot of time teaching us X’s and O’s and the one on the whiteboard and film session in situational awareness, reacting to defense at the halves and end of ballgames. So the triangle offense is kind of like a chessboard of basketball with a lot of read and react to your teammates, but also the defense… and I picked up on it pretty quick. In fact, Jim Cleamons once said in an interview that I had I learned the triangle offense faster than anybody during those days so it gave me an advantage over some of the other guys that were trying out for the squad because my timing was good, my reactions were good.
In your book, you talked about always carrying the mindset of always being professional. The three characteristics you mentioned were talent, professionalism and smarts. Do you still abide by those three things to stay in the league in this new era?
SW: I think it applies in all walks of life, whatever you do about being a professional at your craft and taking yourself seriously and the motivation, the work ethic that goes into it. In the league, you’re an entrepreneur, especially maybe even more so now today with all the off-court marketing. But I write a lot about those guys early teaching me what it was like to be a pro because I think they helped me in my longevity and trying to help younger guys after me about what it’s like to be in the NBA and being a professional.
I honestly believe there were guys more talented than me that were either in the league while I was there or came in after me. And then I was able to play longer than all of them because I was wanted by ball clubs towards the end of my career, especially here in Phoenix, and then Cleveland, Dallas as well. I got a reputation for being a guy that would help the chemistry in the locker room, help guys that weren’t necessarily always on the same page or didn’t get along. Get them to buy into a team that we could accomplish so much more as a team if we were a tight-knit group. I did it in a very subtle way without having to basically sit guys down and tell them that you’re getting guys to get to know one another. Get to know about their families and their histories and their upbringings and some of the struggles that they have in life outside the lines of basketball. And that was taught to me by the guys that I came into the league with. I think that some guys that come into this league, especially back in the day, 30 years ago, high draft picks went to the worst teams and sometimes the worst teams had players with the worst attitudes. Not being drafted, I got to go to a good team, where guys had good attitudes. And so that in itself was a big bonus. Every time I talk to John Paxson, I always relay that story.
You said in your book that Allen Iverson had a terrible work ethic. You were coming off winning rings with Michael Jordan. Comparing most peoples’ work ethic to Michael Jordan’ doesn’t seem fair. Can you expand a bit on your experience with Iverson?
SW: Listen, I do go at Iverson pretty good. I didn’t want to make the book about Allen Iverson. I was trying to contrast what it was like to be not only with Jordan, but be with professionals when I first came in the NBA. Jordan had great work ethic that made him the greatest basketball player of all time. However, you want to rank it, he’s a superstar. Some people will call Allen Iverson a superstar, but when he first came into the league, he was a player that I’m not even talking about so much as his work that could not be in the practice. That was apparent to anybody, but it was the things that he did to divide us that never allowed us to accomplish much as a team.
We weren’t very talented, but I always felt as though we could never become a close unit, because of his attitude. One of the things that I mentioned [in the book] was reading off player salaries and bitching about how someone’s making more than him when he was the leading scorer on the team. That’s just not conducive to what we needed.
After I was traded from Philadelphia, I spent four and a half years there and only two and a half of those were with Iverson. So I heard that he did mature as a player. To what level I don’t know, but I heard that he did clean up his act.
While you were in Philadelphia you talked about how Kobe Bryant showed up to St. Joseph's University when you and some of your Sixers' teammates played in the summer. Did you know right away he was going to be really good?
SW: Kobe [Bryant] was a high school player my first couple years. in Philly. He went to Lower Merion, which was right off the Main Line, which was where St. Joseph’s University was. From the time that I saw him play and I thought he was already a college player. He wasn’t the best player on the floor when I saw him playing, but he wasn’t the worst either. He was doing some fantastic things that was like, wow, I hope he’s considering going to North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Then someone told me now he’s thinking about going into the NBA. I could see that too.
Even when the Lakers traded for him in the 1996 draft, you knew he was going to be special?
SW: Oh, I knew. they had a good one. I didn’t know about his workouts at the time, but the strength and conditioning coach and I were kind of tight. And he ended up leaving the Sixers and going and working for Kobe. And he started telling me stories about how hard this kid works.
It must have been tough dealing with what transpired with your parents. Mental health awareness wasn’t prevalent at the time, but it is now. How do you think you would have coped in today’s era?
SW: Well, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought of it like that. What would it be like now, in today’s age, and the Internet can be both helpful and cruel. At the same time, I think maybe in a way I was maybe lucky that there was no Twitter, there was no social media. I had a chance to maybe grieve without the entire world knowing what had happened, although it’s difficult at times, it felt to me that everybody did.
I saw a psychologist for a couple of sessions, but I felt uncomfortable talking with them. I think there was a stigma back in the day that athletes had to be both physically tough and mentally tough. And I’m glad that perception of mental weakness has changed somewhat, and that athletes are taking times when they are struggling with their mental health, and that teams are aware of this.
I don’t know if it bothered my play on the court, but certainly bothered me off the court. The court for me was therapeutic in a way, it was an escape from having to deal with some of that pain and trauma that comes with the situation when your father turns a gun on your mother and then kills himself. So locking into a Dean Smith practice being with my teammates and being pushed physically hard was a good way for me to not have to think about some of the other things that were going on in my world.
You played with both LeBron James and Michael Jordan. I know you’ve already talked to us about who was the GOAT, but can you go a bit in-depth of what you saw from both?
SW: I mentioned in my book that they’re 1 and 1A, in my opinion. I enjoy LeBron, I had him when he was just turning 20 years old halfway through the season. So, I had him before he was fully developed into the player that he has become, but I got a front-row seat to watch that over my time broadcasting and coaching in the NBA. So, it’s been a joy to be in the discussion of one of four guys that played with both Michael Jordan and LeBron James.
I like to think that I played with Michael. The real Michael Jordan, not the one that those guys played with in Washington. He would take players’ confidence from them and it did not matter who that player was to the point where they would be left thinking I can’t beat this guy. When they got home at night, they wouldn’t be able to dream that they could beat him. That’s how he robbed players and he just delivered in a way that everyone expected him to deliver, but he still found ways to surpass their expectations.
It’s really an intangible. It’s hard to put into words, but we see guys like Karl Malone, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, I can go on and on about the guys. I watched him systematically dismantle their ability to think that they could beat the Bulls. Scottie Pippen was great, and Dennis Rodman played his role. Same with Horace Grant, and some of the guys that were on the group of teams that I was with them, but it was the way that he went out there and that he delivered in the biggest moments you just think, ‘Can’t beat this dude, man’. He just refuses to lose. You might not win every game, if you’re not beating them in a series and that’s when he was at the top of his game. That’s what I got when I got to the Bulls. In 1990-91, I got that version of MJ. I got that killer instinct, dude, that would just snatch someone’s soul from inside them. And to me, that was great to be close to that greatness. That’s how I love playing team basketball. I didn’t need to be the star, but I needed to be on the floor and win. Having that guy as a teammate we go with everyone else does their job, you gonna win.
Since ‘The Last Dance’ came out, Scottie Pippen has really gone after Michael Jordan. Just the other week, he said MJ was a horrible player when he joined the Bulls. Is this more about personal issues than their actual basketball ability?
SW: Yeah, it’s been sad for my heart to really see and listen to some of the things that have been going on with Scottie. I don’t hear much from Michael. On Michael’s side, he just seems to be quiet on it. But Scottie is really upset, and I don’t particularly know 100 percent all of it. I just try to stay in my lane and let those heavyweights battle those types of things out, but I hope that they find some time to pick up a phone or sit down together and work it out. Because this is the celebration of the 30th year of the 1993 threepeat championships. And I was so looking forward to either from a team standpoint, organization standpoint, or just a bunch of guys getting together at an undisclosed location and just breaking some bread and talking about those stories, having a reunion. And that’s just not happening with the current temperature right now between the two superstars honestly.
I get it as Michael Jordan financed the documentary, and I’m sure he stirred a little bit towards himself because of that, but he gave Pippen the ultimate compliment that he was my favorite teammate of all time, and without Scottie I don’t win the six championships. So I don’t understand what more he really wanted from Michael that Michael didn’t give him that is considered a slight. That’s the hard part for me on that one.
In today’s league, who do you see has that MJ mentality, that killer mentality, and a player that has really stood out to you?
SW: Wow, I wouldn’t want to just recklessly throw out a name. I’ve had a chance to watch Jimmy Butler more this year than I have in years past, and I am very impressed with him. This kid Devin Booker, I’ve watched him a lot more this year than I have in years past and I thought he was fantastic in the playoffs this year, as well.
The guy [Nikola] Jokic, I don’t know if he’s got the attitude, but I can’t remember a big man that I either played with or against that can do what he does. I made a list the other day and you know all the traditional bigs in the game and if he continues doing what he’s doing, I got him right now ahead of [Patrick] Ewing, [Rik] Smits, David Robinson, Bob Lanier, and Ralph Sampson. I mean, he’s up there right now with Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal. Only person you could probably put in front of him would be [Kareem Abdul] Jabbar, [Bill] Russell and [Wilt] Chamberlain probably the only three bigs that you can say for sure. Those are some of the hallowed names of centers in NBA history.
By the time he’s totally said and done. And I’m looking at the Denver team the way it was constructed. I don’t know what contracts are but keep those guys around together. I don’t see this as a one-and-done championship. I can see them rattling off with doing kind of what Golden State has done.
