Jason Williams (basketball player)

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Basketball player
Jason Williams
Jason Williams
Player information
Full name Jason Chandler Williams
Nickname White Chocolate
birthday 18th November 1975 (age 44)
place of birth Belle , West Virginia , United States
size 185 cm
position Point guard
college Florida
NBA draft 1998 , 7th pick, Sacramento Kings
Clubs as active
1998-2001 Sacramento Kings 2001-2005 Memphis Grizzlies 2005-2008 Miami Heat 2009-2011 Orlando Magic 2011 Memphis GrizzliesUnited StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
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Jason Chandler Williams (born November 18, 1975 in Belle , Virginia ) is a retired American basketball player who was a point guard in the NBA for a total of twelve seasons .

Williams was selected in the 1998 NBA Draft by the Sacramento Kings and later played for the Memphis Grizzlies , Miami Heat and Orlando Magic . Because of his spectacular playing style, he was nicknamed "White Chocolate".

He was a regular of the Heat in the 2006 playoffs when the team won the NBA championship. In 2007, the franchise added Williams to their list of the Top 25 Heat Players.

Career

college

In his first season (1995-96) at Marshall University he reached an average of 13.4 points and 6.4 assists per game. When his then coach Billy Donovan moved to the University of Florida as head coach in 1996 , Williams followed him. In his new team he was immediately set as a regular point guard and achieved an average of 17.1 points and 6.7 assists in the 1997/98 season. On December 3, 1997 in the game against Duquesne, he set a college record with 17 assists . That same season he was kicked out of school. The reason for this was his ongoing drug antics. When asked what he liked most about his college days, he replied, “I cherished getting kicked out of school.” (“I loved getting kicked out of school .”)

NBA

After being kicked out of college, he decided to sign up for the 1998 NBA Draft , where he was selected 7th by the Sacramento Kings . In addition to rookie Williams, the Kings also had other high-quality players on the team: Chris Webber , Vlade Divac , Peja Stojaković . Thus, the Kings became a play-off candidate this year . Williams delighted fans and experts with his spectacular style of play, which earned him the nickname "White Chocolate" and comparisons with Pete Maravich . In his first year in the NBA, his jersey was number 55 in the top 5 best-selling jerseys. Williams was also named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team for his first year performance .

In the 2000/01 season he was suspended for the first 5 games of the season by the NBA because he did not participate in an anti-drug program set up by the league, although he was contractually obliged to do so. Although Williams was a talented player, he showed little playful improvement and was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies in 2001 in exchange for Mike Bibby .

The team of the Grizzlies under coach Sidney Lowe improved immensely. Williams contributed his share with 14.8 points and 8.0 assists. In 2002, General Manager Jerry West was able to get the retired trainer Hubie Brown to train the Grizzlies. The team won 28 more games this season than last year and has set a franchise record to date. With the Memphis Grizzlies, Williams gradually matured into one of the most passable point guards in the league. While he increased his point and template values to 14 and 8, he reduced the number of ball losses ( turnovers ) to 1.7 per game. However, Williams never survived the first round of the play-offs with the weak Grizzlies in four years.

In the 2005/06 season Williams was transferred to the Miami Heat and was part of the heat team under coach Pat Riley and the star players Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal .

Williams in the jersey of Magic

Williams was in the starting five of the team as point guard. Against the Detroit Pistons he scored 21 points in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, with 10 hits from 11 attempts. Jason Williams won his first NBA title on June 20, 2006 by beating the Dallas Mavericks in the final . During the finals, he averaged 12 points and 5 assists.

In the following season he was still set in the starting line-up of the team (55 games). The Miami Heat reached the play-offs again, but were beaten by the Chicago Bulls in only 4 games in the first round and were disappointedly eliminated. Despite all of this, Jason Williams was voted one of the Top 25 Heat Players of All Time in 2007.

In the summer of 2008, he signed a one-year contract with the Los Angeles Clippers . Quite surprisingly, however, shortly afterwards he announced his retirement from the NBA after only 10 years of active playing career. The contract with the Clippers was terminated.

In mid-2009, rumors surfaced that Williams was planning a return to the NBA. Ultimately, he signed a contract with Orlando Magic on August 19, 2009 . There he played a solid season backing up Jameer Nelson . At the beginning of 2011, however, his contract was terminated by Magic because the club no longer planned with him. Williams then signed for the remainder of the 2010/11 season with the Memphis Grizzlies , for whom he had already played from 2001 to 2005. On April 18, 2011, he finally resigned from professional sports.

Player profile

From the beginning, Williams was an extremely spectacular player who often performed risky passes (“behind-the-back”, “no-look”, “half-court”), assists and aggressive crossovers that were worth seeing in street ball style . With such actions he was regularly represented in the various top ten best actions of the NBA.

Williams was best known for his spectacular style of play

He was also known for his 3-point throws, which he fired from almost all areas of the field. In this way, however, he was often the front runner in ball losses. In his second and fourth years in the NBA, he had an average of 3.5 turnovers per game. Because of these qualities, at the beginning of his career he often sat on the bench when responsibility was required on the field. In the play-offs of 2000, for example, he sat on the bench in all 5 games against the Los Angeles Lakers in the 4th quarter.

In his other NBA stations, Memphis and Miami , he largely abandoned his spectacular style of play. After all, he never had an average of 1.89 turnovers per game in his last 3 seasons (without his statistics in Orlando ). He also achieved one of the highest assist-per-turnover rates in the league. When he first retired, he had a career average of 11.7 points and 6.5 assists per game.

In the Rookie Challenge of the NBA All-Star Weekend 2000, he made a particularly spectacular pass. During a fast break he indicated a pass behind his back to the right, but played the ball on the elbow of the other arm and passed Raef LaFrentz to the left . He then replied to questions from the reporters: "I did it so you all wouldn't ask me to ever do it again." ("I did it so I never have to do it again.")

Nickname

Williams was called "White Chocolate" during his time in the NBA . He got this nickname in his freshman year from Stephanie Shepard, a media worker for the Sacramento Kings .

Private life

Despite his popularity, Williams tried to stay out of the spotlight as much as possible and kept his personal life a secret. Williams is married to Denika Kisty, with whom he has three children, and says he spends a lot of time with his family.

Williams is a close friend of Shaquille O'Neal . He played with him at the Miami Heat . O'Neal helped the Heat in 2005 bring Williams to Miami within the mega-trade (five teams and 13 players involved). Williams wanted to play in a team with O'Neal at the time, and O'Neal wanted a guard as a teammate who would be a good complement to Dwyane Wade and also play spectacularly.

Williams has several tattoos on his body: a panther on his right arm, a dragon on his left arm, and an eye on his chest. According to his own statement, this eye helps him with his extraordinary passports. Before the 1999/2000 season, he had a Japanese lettering tattooed on his arm, which meant insane ("crazy " / "crazy " ). This tattoo attracted attention in that it was covered by an armband during the first two games of the 2000 season in Japan , as it obviously represented something inappropriately in Japanese written language. Since 2000 he has had a wolf holding a basketball on his arm. He also had "White Boy" stabbed on his knuckles . He has also had their names on his forearms since the birth of his children.

Williams played on a team with former NFL player Randy Moss in high school .

Individual evidence

  1. HEAT Unveil's Top 25 Players of All-Time. Retrieved April 17, 2020 .
  2. ESPN.com: Page 2: SGW Quote of the Day archive. Retrieved April 17, 2020 .
  3. Mike Wise: His Game, and Name, Create Stir; Jason (White Chocolate) Williams Sets Off Debate on Stereotypes . In: The New York Times . April 27, 1999, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 17, 2020]).
  4. Mike Wise: ON PRO BASKETBALL; Kings' Williams Pays Price of Forced Fame . In: The New York Times . March 29, 2000, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed April 17, 2020]).
  5. ^ Clippers Guard Jason Williams Announces Retirement After 10 Year NBA Career. Retrieved April 17, 2020 .
  6. ^ Jason Williams announces retirement. Retrieved April 17, 2020 .
  7. Clip of the Morning: Jason Williams Breaks Out the Elbow Pass to Scottie Pippen. Retrieved April 17, 2020 .
  8. ^ National Basketball Association, Players, Jason Williams. In: Wayback Machine. September 29, 2014, accessed April 17, 2020 .

Web links