Mikey Williams: NBA talent at 16,
Mikey Williams’ dream is to be a regular kid. That’s hard when you have NBA talent at 16
When Patrick Mccarthy became the head coach at Hunterville’s Lake Norman Christian in January, he had heard plenty about Mikey Williams, the 16-year-old star of the team.
Mccarthy had heard how the teenage prodigy had 2.7 million Instagram followers, including pro basketball stars Lebron James and Kevin Durant; about how he was friends with — and had worked with — international rapper/actor Drake; and about how Williams may have had an ego to match his national ranking in the class of 2023: No. 2.
Mccarthy knew that Williams had been social media famous since seventh grade — likely to be recognized nearly everywhere he goes — but he didn’t want to let that cloud his first impression.
“My first question to him, was ‘What drives you?’ ” Mccarthy said. “He said, ‘Competition. I want to be the best.’ To hear that really proves he’s different. I love that mentality.
“You hear rumors and your hear what a great athlete he is and he has this Instagram following, all of those type of things, but I wanted to get to know him as a kid, as a person away from all that. A lot of those things are cool, but at the end of the day, there’s still a person up under there that has a lot of needs, and as a kid, too, you want to find a way to help motivate him and keep him on track as much as possible — because he’s got a lot going on.”
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Mikey Williams caused a national stir, at least in college recruiting and high school basketball circles, when he announced last fall that he was moving from San Diego to Charlotte in order to play his sophomore season. Many California high schools have not yet played during the pandemic.
Williams has family in Charlotte and spent plenty of time here in middle school. It’s where his star first rose playing in a summer travel basketball tournament with Lebron James’ son, Bronny, as Lebron often sat on the bench.
He scored 41 points in his first high school game as a freshman, and later scored 77. Then he transferred across the country to a school most people, even around Charlotte, have never heard of.
According to his father, Mahlon Williams, the family visited several private schools in and around Charlotte. But the Williamses enjoyed the smaller school setting at Lake Norman Christian and the anonymity they hoped it could provide. At a school like that, which often has fewer than 10 kids per class, Mikey Williams says he is just like anyone else. Not enough people to crowd him at lunch or in the hallways, and he could still play against highlevel competition.
When he enrolled, the LNC Ospreys suddenly became a hot ticket and getting elitelevel games was as easy as returning an email.
“I already got history out here, and I’ve got family out here and there was the whole COVID situation in California,” Williams told The Charlotte Observer. “They still haven’t played. It just made sense” to come to Charlotte.
At Lake Norman Christian, Williams is averaging 20 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists while playing against a difficult schedule that includes games against nationally ranked teams, including Oak Hill (Va.) and Combine Academy in Lincolnton. The team has played on national television twice and has regularly drawn five-figure audiences on Youtube live streams.
“He’s still so young and has got so much to learn about how to play a full game,” said Mccarthy, his high school coach. “Once he figures that out, I think he’s going to be able to take his game to another level, because he’s not going to only be playing at his potential, but he’ll bring other guys to their potential as well.”
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Lake Norman Christian has at least nine college recruits on the roster, but the center of attention is Williams. Check social media before the games and the promotional posts always feature an image of the 16year old juxtaposed with one of the best players from the other team.
“Mikey Williams has a game very similar to Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz,” said Rick Lewis, national recruiting coordinator for Phenom Hoops. “He’s strong, explosive and has elite-level athleticism. He is underrated as a passer. He makes excellent reads and makes timely passes to open teammates.”
At 6-foot-3, 195 pounds, Williams has a college-ready body and that explosive athleticism Lewis referred to. Fans will often arrive early to games to watch his warm-up dunk routines. But Williams also has a game behind the flash: A true point guard’s handle and a jump shot where he can lift himself high into the air to release, or fade away.
Williams said he’s enjoying the better competition since coming to North Carolina, which basketball insiders frequently refer to as “The Hoop State,” due to the high level of talent produced here annually.
“California,” Williams said, “has more high-level players. Carolina has more good players, players that can play. In California, we’ve got a lot of 5-star (recruits). There’s not a lot of 5-stars out here, but your 3-stars and your 4-stars, they can compete.”
To stay sharp, Williams works out before school and after practice, constantly perfecting the signature moves he does in games, including a step-back 3-point shot from NBA range.
“It’s just hard work, but a lot of it is God’s gift,” Williams said. “I’ve seen people work just as hard as me but they don’t have the gift. I’ve seen it with some of my friends and people I’ve played with. I don’t take it for granted. The NBA is my goal. I want to be one of the greatest players to play. I know I can get there. I just have to keep working.”
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Growing up in San Diego in the 1970s and ‘80s,
Mahlon Williams, became a legendary high school hooper.
As a junior at Sweetwater High School, the 6-3 Mahlon averaged 23 points per game, tied for the county lead. The first two games of his senior year, he was averaging 30, but he missed the next 13 games for failing to maintain a 2.0 grade-point average. He returned, after his suspension, and led the team to the playoffs.
Before he left high school, Williams scored 1,932 points and averaged double figures in rebounding. As a freshman, he led the team to its first postseason in 10 years and Sweetwater never missed while he was there. But the time away as a senior hurt his recruiting, he told the San Diego Uniontribune.
“The Mcdonald's All-american people, not to mention colleges, suddenly backed off,” Williams told the newspaper. “I never could catch up.”
Williams played at United States International University, near his hometown, and later San Diego City College before transferring to Baker University, an NAIA school in Kansas. A back injury there ended his career.
“That's why I stay on Mike about his grades,” Mahlon Williams said. “I was cocky and not being humble, and that's what happens, you know.”
At 31, nearly 10 years later, he went back to college, eventually earning a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master's in human behavior. He later got a second master's in sports psychology online from the University of the Rockies. He worked in a local school district for more than a decade and got involved with boys and girls travel basketball.
During his second college stint, Williams met his wife, Charisse, who played Division I softball at Hampton. When they had their first child, Mikey, Charisse put a basketball in his hands.
While Mahlon was coaching a travel team that included his godson, a future NBA and European pro named Malcolm Thomas, Charisse had Mikey off to the side, working on dribbling and shooting.
“She taught him how to dribble at 11 months,” Mahlon Williams said. “She put a lot of work into him and I got to Mike around third grade. I didn't want to start too soon with him.”
Mikey literally grew up with basketball. Dad began coaching an Adidas-sponsored national girls travel team, the Compton Magic, and later coached a branch of that team called the Socal Magic. Mahlon Williams estimates that he helped send more than 80 girls to college basketball programs, earning more than $16 million in scholarships.
When Mikey was in third and fourth grade, he trained with those elite players every day. That athleticism that came from both his parents was also beginning to show.
By the fifth grade, Mahlon — and most everyone around — could see that Mikey Williams was a little different.
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Mahlon Williams and Pat Mccain are cousins who grew up together in San Diego. They're also best friends.
In 2015, Mccain's father died and he returned home to Salisbury, N.C., to check on his mother. He worked in the sports uniform business and while he was coming to the Charlotte-area often during that time, he noticed the burgeoning youth sports market and sold his cousin on the level of competition in the area.
“I could work a tournament in Charlotte, then Atlanta and then Baltimore,” Mccain said. “It was hard to sell the family on moving from sunny southern California and come back to Charlotte, but we did it.”
He also convinced Mahlon Williams to send Mikey to Charlotte for his fifth-grade summer to play, to experience different competition and game environments. Mccain's son, Devon, is a year older and grade up from Mikey, but the two are best friends. Devon plays football now at Hough High School in Cornelius. Back then, Mikey would play on Devon's teams, pitting Mikey against older players.
It's been six years since Mikey began visiting Charlotte for the travel ball experience in the summertime. His first ingame dunk came while playing in Charlotte in sixth grade.
By 2017, the legend of Mikey Williams began to grow, when his AAU team beat the North Coast Blue Chips., who featured Bronny James, the son of NBA legend Lebron James. Mikey had 31 points in a win, his uncle said.
“Mikey took a picture with Lebron,” Mccain said. “That's when it all kind of started.”
In 2018, Williams played with Bronny James on the 7th grade North Coast Blue Chips. Williams was a featured player on a team that became popular on social media as they traveled the country. The Blue Chips beat Chris Paul's CP3 7th-grade travel team in a national championship game in uptown Charlotte. Lebron coached the game, and a Youtube video that shows highlights has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.
Instagram, which had started in 2010, hit one billion users in 2018 and was especially popular among teens. And Mikey Williams, by then, was becoming a popular teenager.
His IG account grew exponentially as did his internet fame. He said he gained 300,000 followers in two weekends.
“It was coming out of your shell. People didn't know who I was,” Williams said. “I played in Charlotte with the Blue Chips and ever since then, people have been on me. I always say there are waves, and people will ride whatever the next wave is. And that's when I was the wave, and now someone else may be the wave. People like knowing what's new.”
Except, Williams' wave doesn't show signs of stopping.
“The frenzy started in gyms,” Mccain said. “Now you're seeing this thing called social media peaking. You had your Zion (Williams) and your Lamelo (Balls) but they were high school, going to college. It was perfect timing because when social media was at its peak, he was 13-, 14-years old. He had a million followers in eighth grade. That had never been done before.
“People would come up to him and ask for his autograph (after games) and take pictures with him and post it on their site. Sometimes you would have a mob of people standing there, 100 people. That's when we started realizing we needed security and a family member there to make sure it's a secure situation.”
COVID-19 has generally taken crowds away from high school basketball this season, but Lake Norman Christian games can become events. Game organizers at a tournament in Myrtle Beach this season needed to hire security to escort Williams from the locker room to the game floor and later to the team bus.
“He's in a space that's never been created,” Mccain said. “There's never been a Mikey Williams. There's no one to compare him to. There have been multiple 5-star athletes. We have them every year, but not one of those 5-star athletes are social media influencers at this level. So he's wearing two hats. I remember when he started his IG account. He was in my house. He said, `Unk, you gotta get IG. I have 743 followers.
“`I'm trying to get to a thousand.' “