Williams eager to hit floor
Bad knees have cost Raptor two seasons ‘Try your best to stay positive around team’
Every fan who has paid hard- earned money to watch a professional athlete perform has sat in the stands and thought about — or often yelled out — what a player should be doing. It’s part of the allure of sport. Even players who know how difficult it is to run a fast- break offence or hit a receiver sliding across the field at full speed can find themselves judging their teammates from the sidelines.
“ Oh, yeah,” said Raptors point guard Alvin Williams, who has been injured and spent most of the last two years observing his teammates go through tortuous times on the court. “ You find yourself doing that.
“It’s just, you know, when you’re watching the game you always make yourself better than what you were. I’m like, ‘ I was Magic Johnson when I was playing. Everyone’s making mistakes and I would have never done that.’ It’s hard not to critique and be over- critical, but at the same time I understand what’s going on out there.”
Williams has been nagged by knee problems for years. But it all came to a head last November when he finally gave in and underwent a garish procedure in which holes were drilled into the bone of his right knee to encourage bleeding that is supposed to replace worn- away cartilage.
After thousands of hours of stretching and lifting and running up and down hills and doing agility drills and, finally, normal basketball practice, Williams is about to get back into action, back to the place where he lives and where he has carved his identity as a fierce competitor who plays with a kind of hockeylike abandon.
Barring some kind of unforeseen problem, Williams will come off the bench at some point in tonight’s Air Canada Centre pre- season game between the Raptors and Vince Carter’s New Jersey Nets. It will be his first action since leaving a game in Chicago on March 19, 2004.
Williams admits he’s had some setbacks during training camp.
“ Some days you get up and it’s just killing you. Other days you get up and you’re doing well. . . . Sometimes it’s just psychologically draining. You get up and you don’t know what to expect from your body.”
Williams said there were times over the last couple of years when he felt disconnected from his teammates.
“ You try your best to stay positive around the team and try not to consume yourself with your own problems. I’ve tried to be upbeat and positive and try not to bring what I was going through to the team.”