Ex-Net helps self by helping others
Jayson Williams was once told by his sponsor that he had messed up so badly in life that he could only become one of two things: a warning or an example.
Instead, Williams believes that he can be both.
The former New Jersey Nets and St. John’s star, who spent 27 months in prison for covering up the accidental shooting death of his limousine driver, Gus Christofi, is trying to exorcise the demons of his past through the Rebound Institute — a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center he founded — as well as the Jayson Williams Foundation, which helps prevent young, impoverished kids in Riviera Beach, Fla. from going down the same path.
“I love it. It keeps me sober,” Williams told the Daily News in a phone interview on Friday. “It’s my passion. As much as I’d love to coach at St. John’s University and be part of their staff, now, it’s real hard for me to teach a kid to do a jump hook when these young folk, older folk, all kind of folk are teaching me how to live and saving my life and they think I’m saving theirs. So we’re helping each other.”
Williams, 50, said the programs have finally allowed him to find structure in his life that he has lacked since he was sentenced to prison in 2010.
While it has put him in a happier place, he admits that he has still not overcome the pain he caused the Christofi family and the damage he has done to his own: his wife divorced him and his children remain hostile toward him.
“If I could take it all back I would, I’m sorry,” he said. “But this is the only way right now, a defense mechanism, keeping myself busy last 28 months at 1617 hours a day, six days a week, just so I don’t think about that. So when I get home I don’t need a drink to knock me out.”
Before Williams could begin helping others, he had to help himself. The pain he still deals with led him to alcohol and drugs after his release from prison.
“When you come back out of jail and pay your debt to society you think society going to let you back in, that’s not how it went,” he said. “You start to feel alienated, you start crying in your beer. Without structure, when I lose my structure comes destruction. When I can’t get up, not regiment, I’m all out of whack. Alcohol was one thing. Ambien was another. When I couldn’t get Ambien and ran out of that I drank myself to get to sleep. It was trying to get to sleep because of all the pain of not forgiving yourself.”
It reached the point where his friends and fellow New York athletes — Charles Oakley, Curtis Martin and Chris Mullin — all guided him toward checking into a rehab center in Florida.
Williams completed the 30-day program, which he said not many athletes can do, but did not know what to do next with his life when Martin convinced him to go back down to Florida.
“Curtis Martin was like, Jay, you got to go down and get in this business,” he said. “Your life skills, the world needs your life skills and abilities, they’re colliding. That’s where your passion is. You can help a lot of people and that’s exactly what I went and did.”
Williams hopes he can serve as an example to those in his treatment program. He allows seven “teammates” — which he calls them instead of clients — in each month and uses what he calls outdoor venture therapy, a method of doing different outdoor activities to shift their focus elsewhere and help them with their disease.
They also aid people who are battling mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression.
“We change lifestyles. We don’t tell you what not to do, we show you different things to do,” he said.
As for his foundation, he views that as the warning. His goal is to guide young kids from poor backgrounds away from the mistakes he and his “teammates” have made and introduce them to new things they may not have been exposed to before.
“Every kid from the ghetto has seen a basketball game or listened to a rap concert,” he said. “They don’t need to be an NBA player. Be doctors and lawyers, teachers and police officers. Things that they’re capable of. I haven’t met a kid yet in Riviera that is going to be an NBA player. But I see the potential for a lot of kids to be reporters, doctors, lawyers, things that make a living.”
While Williams enjoys the work he does, he still imagines himself as a coach with Mullin at St. John’s every day. Yet he knows if he ever wants to get there, he still has a lot more work to do with himself.
“I definitely want to be loved; I don’t want people to dislike me,” he said. “I want to be forgiven but need to start with me forgiving myself. I’m far from that right now.”