In a recent visit with The David Glenn Show, ESPN analyst and former Duke star Jay Williams discusses his new book Life Is Not An Accident, which recounts the motorcycle accident that altered his playing career and the way he bounced back in the years that followed.
Part II:
In one part of your book you talk about a moment in the rehab pool where you’d been at it for months and a nice old lady shared some words of encouragement thinking it was your first day. That must have felt like someone had dropped a bomb on you. What did the rest of that picture look like?
Williams: There were too many moments where I was just absolutely alone in my own head. Even when I was surrounded by people, I was held prisoner in my own mind about this pain I was witnessing on a daily basis and on a minute basis. That story in the pool is a microcosm of how I battle myself. This lady, I don’t know if she’s in her 70s or what, and I’m in the pool, and that’s my goal. That’s my target. That’s what Coach K teaches you. You’re never the person with the X on your back; you’re the person choosing who your target is going to be. You have to be the hunter, not the hunted.
So who else am I hunting in this moment but this 75-year-old lady? She’s ahead of me in the pool with this wave cap on, and I’m like, “Alright, I’m going to pass this lady.” It’s a matter of time. I’m going to lap her. I’m going to make her understand that I’m the dominant athlete in the pool. Sure enough, I cannot catch this lady for my life. It’s one of those moments where you’re like, “OK, what just happened? Is the chlorine in my eyes? I can’t see her anymore.” And then you hear this voice from behind you from this lady, “On your left! On your left!” I’m like, “I know you’re on my left, damn it. I know you are.” She’s lapping me in the pool.
It’s once again a humbling moment that makes you realize that just when you think you’re closer than what you truly are, you realize that you’re that further away and you still have a ton of work left to do.
You wrote that Coach K once told you that you’re the only player to ever bark at him inappropriately. Is that true?
Williams: I’m not sure if I’m the only one, but he made me believe I was the only one in that moment. That was just a sign of my immaturity. I decided to come back to school after my sophomore year when a lot of people told me I should go. Coach K once again is very brilliant at being able to motivate people. We had played at Charlottesville, which was a horrible place for us to play every year, and I’d had a horrific game. (Mike) Dunleavy had had a lot better of a game and same with (Carlos Boozer). It was toward the end of the ball game, and K had drawn up a play for me to hunt my own shot, and I didn’t feel comfortable or confident in myself at that given time. I very much, similar to Chris Carrawell my freshman year at St. John’s, decided to change the play at the end of the game. It was one of those scenarios where we’re walking to the locker room, my head is down, and we lose a chance to win the ACC. Maryland won the regular season that year, and that game kind of determined that. We got into the locker room, and without him even missing a beat, he just started to come right on top of me. Or it felt like he decided to come right on top of me.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this movie, DG, but it was Will Ferrell in Old School where he’s on the podium and he starts answering all these really smart questions, and then after he’s done answering, he’s like, “What just happened? What did I just say?” I had one of those moments with K, where he’s coming down on me, and I just get up knocking my fist into my other hand and start blurting off all this stuff and all this frustration. In this moment of realizing, “What the hell are you saying, J-Will?,” I was almost standing next to him, and I start to back-pedal and be like “What just happened? What did I say?”
Everybody thinks these moments as a coach and a player are all happy moments, but Coach K has three daughters, and we are all essentially his sons. Not every father-son relationship is happy, happy, happy. You go through some rocky times. There are some times when you have to grow and develop as a young man, and for me, that was once again a sign of my immaturity. I was talking about why I needed to leave school the year before, but I was still immature, and we were still all kids trying to learn what it is to be a man. That was one of the difficult times that we had, and we had to learn how to grow through it.
Has your book been out long enough that people are already contacting you to let you know how inspiring it’s been?
Williams: I’ve had multiple. It’s weird, DG. You’re the first person to ask me this question, and I commend you for that. It’s been overwhelming for me because people are now coming to me for advice. I’m no guru. I’m human like everybody else.
I’m trying to help people deal with their own demons. It’s been good for me because people have been able to relate to me, but at the same time, a guy in particular who was like “I’ve had alcohol-abuse issues, and I’ve hit my son multiple times. That’s over and gone now and happened four or five years ago, but I don’t know how to really even get my son to look at me as his father again.” I don’t know how to answer that question. I try to say first of all, you’re accepting the responsibility of your actions and repercussions of your actions, and you have to try to talk your son through that and own your mistakes and say, “That’s not who I am now, and I want to learn how to be your father again. There’s no book written about how to be a dad. I handled myself wrong, and this is what I was going through at the time.”
So trying to help everybody through their stuff has been somewhat of a challenge, but I’m not afraid of people joking about my life or judging my life, because if everybody were open enough to share their insecurities and their demons, then everybody is judgable. Everybody has stuff that we can talk about from a Monday morning quarterback perspective. Hopefully my book can help people shed their own skin and their own demons.
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