By Michael Anft
Every once in a while, an athlete comes around who lights up the scoreboard, dazzles you with his God-given talent and leaves his mark on the record books for years to come.
Every once in an even rarer while, that superstar accomplishes things that can’t be found in a stat book but in the hearts of the people whose lives he’s touched.
Former University of Maryland standout Walt Williams was that guy for the Terps basketball program. And 25 years later, Maryland fans still remember Williams as the guy who helped the Terps make it through sanctions that would have buried most programs for decades.
For Maryland, Walt Williams’ tenacity was the stuff of legends.
“The Tip of the Arrow For Loyalty”
Williams was a one-time University of Maryland men’s basketball star who is now a behind-the-mic guy during Terps radio broadcasts. Once a tall, scrawny, Prince George’s County high school kid with socks up past his knees and an ability to handle the ball like a pro, all young Williams wanted to be was the next Len Bias. It didn’t matter the heartbreaking way Bias’ life ended.
“I had to represent for Prince George’s,” Williams, now 45, said. “And after I saw Len Bias play, I had to be at Maryland.”
And that has never changed. Though it has certainly been tested.
In 1988-89, after Williams’ freshman year, Maryland changed coaches; during his sophomore year the program was slammed by NCAA sanctions that kept the team off television for a season and kept them out of postseason play for two seasons during the heart of Williams’ college career; and during his junior year, a broken leg sidelined him for the first six weeks. But through it all Williams stayed true to his school, even through he didn’t need to.
Georgetown, UNLV, Virginia, Wake Forest and a slew of other top college programs were ready to take the 6-foot-8 forward. Because of the NCAA sanctions, he could have transferred without sitting out the usual year. His parents, the strong roots under this tall tree, were ready to accept whatever decision he made — Maryland or otherwise.
Yet, the man who by then was called “The Wizard” stayed close to home, turning the story of a great player into a legendary Terp.
The Sporting News recently ranked Williams as the No. 9 all-time greatest Maryland hoopster precisely because of his loyalty, which “helped Gary Williams start the Terps on a trajectory toward the national title that came 10 years after Walt completed his career,” the website wrote.
The should-he-stay-or-should-he-go question looks ridiculous now, given how much reverence Walt Williams, a humble guy who often wonders what the fuss is about, continues to get for hanging around.
As this year’s Terps aim for a national title — most major polling services have them ranked among the top three teams nationally — is there something to learn from the exceptional example Walt Williams set?
“There was a defection from Mark Turgeon’s squad a couple years ago,” said Len Elmore, another former Terps great who also served as Williams’ agent during his 11-year NBA career.
Walt Williams’ status — what Elmore calls “the hood ornament, the tip of the arrow for loyalty” — provides a stark contrast to the five players who skipped out on the program following the 2013-14 season.
“Going forward, if this team can channel a Walt Williams-like attitude that says that if they stick together and stay true they can do great things, they can do great things,” Elmore said.
Elmore noted Walt Williams gave Washington, D.C.-area players — guys like Exree Hipp, Johnny Rhodes and Duane Simpkins — a reason to go to Maryland. Their class was the first stellar recruiting class to enter after the stern sanctions ended in 1992-93. Those players helped make the program nationally prominent again.
“Walt is one of the standard-bearers in Maryland basketball history,” said Gary Williams, Walt Williams’ coach for his last three seasons, and the Terps’ headman for a total of 23 years. “He kept us relevant during a time that not a lot of schools have gone through. He gave us a chance to get better and move forward.”
This tale of faithfulness is worthy of the ancient Greeks, who favored family, community and the gods more than anything else, though the Walt Williams saga begins in working-class northeast Washington. It’s not the oft-told struggles-to-riches story. Walt Williams had advantages, ones he’s proud to claim.
He lived in a small apartment there; not just with his immediate family, Theresa and Walter Ander Williams Sr., and his older sister, Stephanie, but with several aunts and uncles. Oxygen might have been hard to come by, but Walt Williams said he never minded the crowd.
“I always felt I was surrounded by people who cared, who loved me,” he said, adding the feeling has suffused his entire life.
Resilience At An Early Age
At around the age of 6, Walt Williams remembers walking to a playground across the street, in the tough Fort Chaplin Park Apartments, and using a little empty square at the top of jungle gym bars as a basketball hoop. At home, he’d bend a clothes hanger into a round shape and put it on his wall.
“I was very resourceful,” he said with a laugh.
Soon, his mom, a program analyst for the Postal Service and dad, a manager for an office supply store, moved the family into a house in nearby Temple Hills, Md. It was hardly without potential dangers. Addicts and dealers lurked around nearby apartments. Street robberies weren’t uncommon.
“There was always an opportunity to get into the wrong thing,” Walt Williams said.
Fortunately, his block of Beaumont Street was filled with kids who loved to play hoops and football, including tackle games on the asphalt streets.
Theresa Williams ran a tight ship. Walt Williams’ friends were welcome to come and play, to eat and to sleep over. But they couldn’t curse or smoke. When one uttered a forbidden word, she told him he was banished.
That youngster may plead his case but, “I could never let him back,” Theresa Williams said. “If I did, the other boys would think they could get away with it.”
Walt Williams, then a regular-sized child — he entered Crossland High School as a 5-foot-10 freshman — honed his hoops skills on the streets. Organized ball was a mystery to him.
“I played in a Boys & Girls Club league for about a week-and-a-half once,” he said.
His reputation on the street was as a good point guard.
“But there were a lot of good players around,” he said.
Crossland head coach Earl Hawkins presented Walt Williams with a challenge and eventually, a role model.
“Earl Hawkins was the first guy I saw who could walk up to the toughest guy and demand their attention,” Walt Williams said. “He’d say, ‘I’m not a thug or anything close to it, but you’ll respect me.’ That had an impact on me.”
“I knew nothing about basketball, really.”
During those first tryouts, Hawkins put Walt Williams through suicide drills, sprints, long runs and other things a 15-year-old might see as indignities.
“I didn’t like it at all,” Walt Williams said.
After two days, he took a late bus home and saw his friends out and about having fun. He felt like he was missing out. So, he quit. Enter Walt’s sister, Stephanie Williams, and her evil eye.
“When I got home, she treated me like someone who was just going to end up in the streets doing stupid things. I didn’t like how that made me feel,” Walt Williams said.
He went back a few days later, but the JV team had already picked its 15 players. Walt Williams decided to volunteer as the team’s manager and water boy. By midseason, five players got kicked off the squad for poor grades. Walt Williams, with an A average, took one spot. It was an early sign of Williams’ tenacity.
“I saw a kid who was so thin, you wondered whether he’d ever gain enough weight to compete,” said Hawkins, who also coached at UMBC from 1988-1995. “But he was stronger than he looked.”
Even then, Walt Williams’ ability to shoot, handle the ball and get teammates involved was advanced.
“I put one of our best older guards on him, and he couldn’t get the ball away from him,” Hawkins said. “That’s when I knew we had someone who could be a special player.”
As his career unfolded at Crossland, Walt Williams shot up 10 inches.
“My knees were killing me from the growing pains,” he said.
The school won a couple of state championships, and although his full skill-set was on display throughout his junior season, the only colleges sniffing around were mid-majors. The summer after, he attended camps, including an annual prestigious Nike tournament, where he squared off against the taller, bulkier Alonzo Mourning, who would later star at Georgetown and in the NBA. He and his team regularly beat Mourning’s bunch and the phone started ringing off the hook.
“It was all a big bother, really,” Walt Williams said of the recruiting process. “If I had taken the process seriously, I would have chosen North Carolina. They recruited me harder.”
He made an early decision to attend Maryland, in part because he liked that head coach Bob Wade looked like his grandfather. Also, he wanted to play with then-freshman star center Brian Williams (which ultimately never worked out, as Brian Williams transferred to Arizona for the 1988-89 season). And there was the Bias factor.
Bias, a first-team All-American forward at Maryland, died of a cocaine overdose in his dorm room two days after being drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1986. Before he passed, Bias was largely considered the best college basketball player in the country.
“I wanted the kids to pretend they were me, like I did with Bias,” Walt Williams said.
But there was also family to stay close to. As Walt Williams’ Maryland career unfolded, his parents, sister, high school sweetheart, April, and several groups of relatives took vacation days to see his road games. There was kin at every game he ever played while in high school and at Maryland, home and away. Theresa Williams would make huge slabs of lasagna for Walt Williams and his teammates. During one Tobacco Road visit, Walt Williams’ Aunt Pauline made mini-pound cakes to give to each person on the team bus.
Becoming a legend
Walt Williams’ early college career featured some setback — a broken finger during his freshman year. But far worse, Wade, Maryland’s head coach, was accused of having an assistant drive point guard Rudy Archer (Southwestern) to community college classes he was taking to restore his academic eligibility. The NCAA investigated, and Wade was forced to leave his job at the end of the year.
Eventually, the NCAA imposed sanctions on Maryland’s basketball program that kept it off TV and out of postseason play for an important part of Williams’ time at Maryland. After the Wade controversy, Maryland pleased its teetering fans and alumni by hiring former Terps player Gary Williams away from Ohio State. The coach and player knew very little about each other.
“I had been all wrapped up coaching against teams like Michigan, which won the national championship that year,” Gary Williams said.
He recalled seeing Walt Williams for the first time: a skinny guy with skills, who didn’t say much.
“Those guys had been through a lot of turmoil already,” Gary Williams said. “Nobody said anything. They would have been wary of anybody.”
Walt Williams didn’t know quite what to make of his new coach.
“He wasn’t a father-figure type,” Walt Williams said. “I’d had no white male influences in my life up to that point. Eventually, I’d see him sweating his butt off coaching and decide that I couldn’t work any less hard than he did. He’d talk to us pregame like we could win, no matter who we were playing. That’s what formed my confidence in him. I tried to live up to his belief in me.”
That confidence, and a surprising 19-14 finish, helped convince Walt Williams to stay after the thud of sanctions hit in March 1990. Walt Williams had averaged 12.6 points per game as a sophomore — third best on the team. But the two top scorers, Tony Massenburg and Jerrod Mustaf, were off to the NBA. Recruiting for Gary Williams was impossible with televised games and the postseason out of the picture. He needed Walt Williams to stay if the Terps were to have any chance of competing in the tough Atlantic Coast Conference.
Gary Williams and assistant coaches Billy Hahn and Art Perry spent one summer day in Temple Hills talking with the Williams family.
“They told me about ‘The Plan,'” Walt Williams said, referring to what the coaches had in store for him.
The idea, Walt Williams said, was that he would not only get even more playing time, but that he’d get a chance to run the point as well. Players his height don’t often get that chance. If it worked out, he’d impress NBA scouts with his size and versatility.
“I thought that was a great gesture,” Walt Williams said.
He prayed on the idea and slept on it overnight and then made the watershed decision to remain a Terp.
His junior year, Walt Williams broke his left fibula in a January game against Duke. While Walt Williams said he thought little about the risk he had taken in coming back to Maryland, his coach was aware of it.
“I just felt so bad then,” Gary Williams said. “I worried about how the injury would affect his development. It was an emotional thing for our team. He had established himself as ‘the man’ by that point.”
Six weeks later, Walt Williams, still gimpy, returned, entering the second half of a home game against Wake Forest to a standing ovation and scored seven points to help the Terps to a win.
But it wasn’t until his senior season, when he was named an All-American, that he achieved the status of legend. On a team that finished 14-15, he averaged 26.4 points per game while frequently running the point. He scored 30 or more points during seven straight ACC games, one short of the conference record.
“The team averaged around 80 points per game — he was scoring about half their points during that stretch,” said Johnny Holliday, the 37-year voice of the Terps and now Walt Williams’ broadcast partner, along with analyst Chris Knoche.
Scoring 38 points at Florida State, 39 against Wake Forest, 38 versus Clemson — memories of Walt Williams, slow dribbling while bent at the waist before exploding to the hoop or rising straight up for a feathery 3-pointer were likely formed amid that streak.
Walt Williams fits in a pantheon of modern-era Terps along with Juan Dixon and Greivis Vasquez, Holliday said.
“It’s amazing how much he’s meant to this program,” Holliday said.
UNCONDITIONAL LOYALTY
Most lives endure bumps and bruises, events that remind us that no matter how gracious good living can be, it can always be interrupted by pain. For Walt Williams, two of those moments bracketed an NBA career filled with playoff runs. The first came not long after he was drafted No. 7 overall by the Sacramento Kings in 1993. His father had watched the draft on TV from his hospital bed, but while Elmore was negotiating Walt Williams’ first pro contract, his dad died. Once he signed his NBA deal a few weeks later, Walt Williams, mindful of what and who got him to where he was, made a $125,000 endowment gift in his father’s name to Maryland to help minority students.
“Walt’s father was everything to him,” Theresa Williams said. “When he got into the game in the NBA, he’d look skyward as if he was saying, ‘I made it, dad. Look at me.'”
The second moment occurred 11 years later, when his third son, Bryce, was born several months premature, weighing only a little more than one pound, and with a mild case of cerebral palsy. His son’s health issues persuaded him to give up the game he loves.
“I knew there were more important places for me to be than on the court,” Walt Williams said.
The rest is pure storybook: A strong marriage to his high-school sweetheart, April, the birth of their sons (he coaches his two oldest at Sherwood High School in Montgomery County), a satisfying and enriching pro career and a second one as a Hunt Valley, Md.-based financial advisor to athletes.
And, after some finagling by Holliday and Gary Williams five years ago, he’s back where it all started, analyzing the play of the newest generation to wear the red-and-white on radio broadcasts. Besides continuing to give to the university through one of its booster clubs, he sits on the board of a charity that helps people with disabilities, and does work for the March of Dimes and others.
Walt Williams came to Maryland to be the next Len Bias. But he actually pulled off something more incredible. He got the Terps past Bias’ death, beyond the firing of head coach Lefty Driesell that followed, and helped Gary Williams’ emerging squad survive sanctions that would have put most programs in the minor leagues for years.
More importantly, Walt Williams serves as a shining example of the good that can come from unconditional loyalty and staying true.
Many coaches and players who have come through the Maryland program since Walt Williams left in 1992 (after graduating with a degree in consumer studies) have taken a cue from him, said Gary Williams, who now counts Walt Williams among his closest friends.
“He’s one of the Maryland guys who has a real story,” Gary Williams said. “And that story is loyalty. To have a good team, you need loyalty among players, to coaches, toward a school. I think fans back then picked up on how our players felt toward each other and what all that means.”
It didn’t hurt that the tall, skinny kid from Prince George’s County had the flashy style to go with the substance, Gary Williams added.
“Maryland basketball players that came after Walt sought to be the kind of player who could not only play as part of a team,” Gary Williams said, “but capture an arena, like Walt could.”
Issue 215: November 2015