Crossroads of a career
Corey Williams has travelled the world hoping to be seen by a pro scout and given a chance to play He realizes his only legitimate shot at the NBA may start today at the Raptors’ camp, by Doug Smith
It is the realization of a onceinopportunity that awaits him that causes the tears to well in Corey Williams’s eyes and the emotion to wash over him.
It is the realization that starting today, all those days and nights spent in basketball outposts from Asia to Europe to South America to the backwaters of North American minor leagues might have all been worth it. He is 28 years old and knows he’s nearing the moment when the dreams are finally over, when the hopes are finally dashed, when the reality hits home — hard — that it’s time to get on with life.
That’s why he’s choking back those tears as he stands in the bowels of the Air Canada Centre, trying to explain just what it means to him to finally get a legitimate chance at making it to the NBA.
“ This is my shot, man,” he says. “You know what I’m saying? This is my chance. I’ll never get another opportunity like this again. I’ve got to take full advantage.” It was not an easy route that landed Williams in Toronto this week, fighting Robert Pack and Tierre Brown for the only spot available on the Raptor roster. He went to a nothing university and a nothing junior college and played in a handful of nothing leagues, always hoping someone would take notice. He played in China, where NBA scouts seldom venture; spent a year in the USBL, a minor league of no significance; he played in Sweden ( Sweden!) and in Brazil and tried to pique the curiosity of at least one NBA birddog, but none came calling. The Denver Nuggets held some kind of open tryout two summers ago, more a marketing ploy than anything else, but Williams took his shot there, too. He was good enough to beat out a couple of hundred no- hopers and get a legit chance at playing for Denver’s summer league team, but that invitation went to the best friend of Nugget guard Andre Miller and Williams was on the outside looking in.
Again.
“ This is just a hard road,” he said. “ This road tells a lot about a person, the character of a person who’s still here trying. Believing in himself regardless of the road he’s taken.
“ Everything I’ve done in the past has led me to this point. I can let this opportunity slip.” Homicide is dead. Fans in Toronto may never have heard of Corey Williams before today and if he fails to impress in a week of camp he’ll never be heard of again, but when you call him Homicide, basketball fans in the biggest hoops city in the world sit up and take notice.
Williams, raised in the Bronx, cut his teeth on the courts of Rucker Park in Harlem, becoming a player of some reputation, known as Homicide because, as he says, “ I killed everyone on the court.” Williams was the most valuable player of the highly regarded Entertainers Basketball Classic at Rucker in 2004, a rather significant accomplishment. But when he left, so did the name.
“ The Homicide thing? We just all name players,” he said. “ But that’s where it stays, it stays in New York. My name is Corey Williams. Homicide is just a summer thing, and that’s where Iwant to leave it.”
Besides, he laughs, “ It’s not a marketable name.” But there is something marketable about Williams’s skill, because if you can make it at Rucker, you’ve got game.
“I can play,” he says firmly. “That’s the one thing I love about New York City basketball, they don’t care who you are or where you’re from, you get on the court, you have to bring it. There’s always a player like me just waiting for an opportunity to match up against you.” There are dangers to having a huge playground rep, though, and they go much deeper than just having young pups taking shots at you on the playgrounds. The perception that street ball isn’t real ball permeates many NBA organizations. Teams look down on guys with big reps but more flash than substance.
That gnaws at Williams.
“ No disrespect, but some people don’t like And 1 ( the shoe company that’s taken street ball to dizzying heights) in New York,” says Williams. “They’ll tell you, ‘ Get out of here with this bull---- basketball. That ain’t real ball.’
“ They call me a street ball player, I’m not a street ball player. I’m a ball player.” It was Raptors assistant coach Jim Todd who first broached the idea of bringing Williams to training camp, after Todd saw the 6- foot- 3 guard playing in a tournament in the Bronx earlier this summer. He was impressed with Williams’s speed, ball- handling and decision- making, but it took some convincing before the invitation was extended. And it’s left Williams damn appreciative.
“ I know they did their background, but still, for them to have never seen me play and invite me? That’s something,” he said.
“ There’s no summer league on my resumé, there’s no NBA camp on my resumé, there’s nothing. Nothing at all. They’re really rolling the dice here.”
It’s not as if Williams will be expected to do much with the Raptors, even if he is able to beat out the veteran Pack and journeyman Brown. He will get garbage time at the end of blowouts, playing behind Rafer Alston and Jose Calderon, and he will be happy for any chance he gets. He won’t make much money by pro standards — the NBA minimum is slightly less than $ 400,000 — but he’ll have a job in the league, a job he’s wanted forever, a job that will make all those games in all those empty gyms in all those foreign lands worth it. No one can say how his story will end right now, whether he’ll be in the league or in the boondocks, but if he is a Raptor, he’s ready.
At the end of a rambling, 40minute conversation, with emotion and passion and incredulity at the opportunity that’s at hand, Williams has a secret to share. A while ago he and some buddies were sitting around thinking of what kind of tattoo they’d like. They were all ballers, so there was going to be some connection to hoops.
Williams rolls up his pant leg, laughing, and shows his ink: A basketball. With claws on the top. Raptor claws. Just like the team’s logo.
“ That’s crazy, man, isn’t that crazy?” he howls. “ I swear to God, three years ago, maybe four, I just got it done. I don’t know why. That’s crazy.”