It’s been a joy ride for Williams and her dad

Long before he became the embraceable hype daddy of the 2019 WNBA playoffs, Don Williams was going to be Richard Williams.

“Yeah, tennis was the first plan,” Williams said. “I saw what Richard did with Venus and Serena and that was my original plan for Courtney and her older sister. The problem was there were no tennis courts around the neighborhood in Folkston. We tried to go and play a little, but the court was too far away.

“Basketball goals, now they’re accessible everywhere.”

Don, who played every sport he could growing up and into high school, started Courtney in the playpen. Then he put a little hoop in his yard in the small Georgia town near the Okefenokee swamp and the Florida state line.

“The yard is where it really started,” Don said. “And then she began playing in the pee wee league, basically for girls and boys, she was the fastest one out there. She’d always argue with my nephew on who’d take the ball out. ‘You take it out!’ ‘No, you take it out!’ I was already on the sidelines yelling encouragement.”

And now here is Don Williams, savoring his daughter’s success as the Connecticut Sun advance to their first WNBA Finals since 2005 in Washington on Sunday. Wait. The word savoring somehow falls far short. Don Williams is loving, hyping, shouting, clapping and squeezing every second of joy from it. He has turned into a television sideline star.

“That’s my boy,” Courtney Williams said. “That’s my man. That’s my main guy. I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t even remember when we started playing basketball. Forever. He’s never changed.”

ESPN has discovered Courtney’s daddy. State TV cameras have found him in the front row of home games. There he is jumping around. Dancing like his daughter loves to dance. Clapping. Shouting encouragement. Reaffirming the redhot shooting of his baby girl. Even holding up a Courtney Williams Fathead in front of his face for the fans to see. When the game is over, there he is picking up Courtney and lifting her to the sky.

Sun fans, of course, already love his daughter, a 58 sliver of a guard.

“I feel like my energy is contagious,” Courtney said. “Let’s have fun. When we have fun, we play our best basketball.”

Williams is second in Sun scoring, second in assists, third in rebounding. And first in jubilation. You know when lightning hit Ben Franklin’s kite? That’s Courtney Williams. She is electricity.

“First and foremost, Courtney has unbelievable confidence,” Sun coach Curt Miller said. “She misses a few shots, has a bad quarter or bad stretch, she never is not going to think she’s not the best player in the gym. You appreciate that kind of confidence.

“The other thing is her personality. She lights up the room. She always is in good spirits, always is uplifting people. Surprisingly, there is a lot of really good players in this league that don’t always love the game. She loves to play the game. Practice, big game or that fifth road game in 10 nights, you’re going to get that same energy every day from here. Courtney just loves the game.”

“You could never hold her down,” Don Williams said. “She didn’t play with dolls or any of that growing up. She was jumping on my dirt bike, riding fourwheelers. Mostly, though, she was hanging with the fellas out there on the court banging and balling.”

Courtney broke her mom’s high school singlegame scoring record that stood for 22 years. Don went on to play football at Cheyney University. He said he earned the nickname “4.2” for running a legendary 40 time. Her unbridled confidence? Courtney shoots back, “From my dad.”

“I’m not one bit surprised what we’ve done this season,” she said of the Sun. And what did the team learn from two previous successful regular seasons that ended with the onegame playoff loss to Phoenix?

“Get a bye and stay out of that onegame elimination,” she answered. “If we can’t

do something now, what are we even doing?”

UConn fans will remember Williams for calling the Huskies “beatable” before the 2016 AAC championship at Mohegan Sun. Final score: UConn 77, South Florida 51.

“Everyone is beatable,” Williams said. “Everyone is human. Morgan Tuck (her Sun teammate who had 11 points and seven rebounds for UConn) and me still joke about that game. I always tell her how lucky she was.”

The intersection of love and a dad’s pride in his daughter is a powerful place, of course and Don Williams, isn’t afraid to show it to the world. We see it on the sidelines. We see it on national television. He puts a smile on people’s faces. He warms hearts. And the cameras surely will find him plenty over the next few weeks.

“He has been doing this since I was little,” Courtney said. “It’s not new for me. I guess it’s great for everyone else. It’s natural to me. It’s not like I got to go pat him on the back. He’s a natural character. He’s born for it.”

“It’s no show,” Don said. “It ain’t no nothing. It’s just us being ourselves. I don’t see how any daddy can sit down when their kid succeeds. When I see her score a basket that feeling automatically goes off in me.”

In recent days, he has called that feeling “a different kind of dope.”

He said if he could bottle that feeling and sell it to everyone, he’d be a multimillionaire.

Yet the more he has thought about it, the more perplexed he seems to have become that folks have become universally impressed with his dad exu

berance.

“To be honest, it’s such a surprise to me, everybody saying that,” Don Williams said. “It’s natural to me, a dad loving his daughter. I got to go deep to even try to comprehend somebody not loving their daughter. I’m hearing people impressed by it. And, I’m like, wow that’s crazy. We’re just out here riding the boat together going for the championship.”

“You just have to fall in love with the relationship and the support a dad has for his daughter,” Miller said. “Genuine support and excitement. My thing is why did it take this long for him to be around this much?”

Williams has been staying with his daughter during the playoffs. He went out to L.A. as the Sun swept the Sparks in Game 3 of the fivegame semifinals. He’s in Washington for the Finals. Yes, he’s fired up.

“Don is such a joy, he has brought another lighthearted person on the team at a time when it’s typically stressful,” Miller said. “Our team is really loose because of some of this. He has been in film sessions. He was in our locker room (the Game 3 sweep) in L.A. It’s like he’s part of the team.”

On the L.A. trip, Don said Courtney told him he couldn’t come on the team bus.

“Daddy,” she explained, “family’s not allowed.”

Minutes later, he was being retrieved for the ride.

“Coach wanted to know where I was,” Williams said, laughing. “My own daughter tried to bench me.”