Derrick Williams made himself into a college star. After a chaotic and nomadic NBA experience, he’s finally made himself into something else.
Sitting in the living room of his newly-rented Houston apartment in 2017, Derrick Williams heard the questions repeat in his head.
Why can’t you stick with one team? What happened to your career? Why are you a bust?
He’d risen from two-star high school prospect to second overall pick and almost as quickly skidded from “sure thing” to basketball journeyman.
He was 26 years old and his lifetime NBA statistics looked like this: six years, six teams, 428 games, averaging 8.9 points on 43.4 percent shooting and 4.0 rebounds.
He had been drafted after Kyrie Irving, but well ahead of future stars such as Kawhi Leonard, Kemba Walker and Jimmy Butler. He knew everyone who paid attention to the NBA considered him a bust. They all thought that what Ryan Leaf was to Peyton Manning in the NFL, Derrick Williams was to Kyrie Irving in the NBA.
But Williams considered himself an underdog.
I’ll show them, he thought, and then he formulated a plan.
Derrick Williams always thought he was going to be a baseball star. Tommy John surgery in eighth grade altered his path.
He was raised by Rhoma Moore, his mother, in La Mirada, California, and never met his father. He learned the fundamentals of basketball from Moore, who played at Mississippi Valley State. Williams grew up around a few male role models — including two of her four brothers — but mostly, he looked up to her.
When he was undergoing extreme growing pains in middle school — from eighth grade to freshman year, he sprouted from 5-foot-9 to 6-foot-5 — he would come home, lie down in his bed, and cry. His mother was always by his side, encouraging him.
“Work through it, work through it, it will all get better,” Moore would tell her son. “No matter what people think, what people say, just be true to yourself.”
As a freshman, Derrick Williams was only good enough to make the freshman team at La Mirada High School. Charlie Torres, then a player at Compton College, watched a scrimmage and took note of the gangly kid making advanced plays.
After the practice ended, Torres invited Williams to some pickup games in Compton. Torres assumed he would dominate right away. He didn’t. He was shy. Set too many screens. Turned down too many open shots.
After his first game, on the 40-minute drive back from Compton to La Mirada, Torres pulled over on the side of the highway, and told Williams: “None of these guys know who you are and they don’t know you for a reason. You need to go home from this game with them knowing who you are.”
Williams took to Torres’ straightforward, disciplined approach. It was a perfect match. Before long, Torres dropped out of Compton College. He became Williams’ trainer, a La Mirada assistant coach, and a father figure to Williams. Wedging a bottle cap in the doorway, Williams and Torres would sneak into the La Mirada gym at 2 a.m., focusing mainly on “guard work.”
With a boost in confidence came a chip on his shoulder. Before one game, Marcus Johnson, who transferred from the University of Connecticut to the University of Southern California, challenged Williams.
“Ah, you’re a f*****g bum,” Johnson told Williams in warmups.
“And Derrick just f*****g killed him,” Torres said.
After they left the gym, on the 40-minute drive back to La Mirada, Torres pulled over the car on the shoulder of the Santa Ana Freeway.
“Derrick, why can’t you do this every time you play? Every single time? If you’re playing against a high school kid, treat him the way you did Marcus,” Torres said.
From then on, Williams stopped caring about who he was playing — he just balled. One game, in the summer heading into his sophomore season, in a team camp game between La Mirada High School and Sylmar Charter at the University of San Diego, Williams, who was rated a two-star by most recruiting sites, matched up against Tyler Honeycutt, the number-four ranked small forward in California and the 28th-ranked recruit in the country at the time, according to ESPN. Williams dropped 43 points and held Honeycutt to three.
“That’s when I knew he was really good, I said at the time to the other coaches, he’s way better than this Honeycutt kid,” Larry Kaupang, Williams’ high school coach, said.
As a sophomore, Williams made La Mirada’s varsity team. On every play, someone pushed Williams around. The physicality toughened him up. One game, against Mayfair, a rival high school, Williams could not miss.
“They couldn’t stop him,” Kaupang said. “From then on, I saw a different Derrick Williams. He was the young guy, then he said, ‘Hey, I could hang with these guys.’”
Even though he came off the bench as a sophomore, Williams ranked second on the team in points (13.0) and second in rebounds (8.3).
“I was an important factor, but I didn’t mind not starting,” Williams said. “And I think that’s why, even today, I really don’t mind not shooting a lot. I’m more of a team player. Passing up a good shot for a great shot, that’s how I am.”
One game, he out-dueled future NBA MVP James Harden and Renardo Sidney, then the number one recruit — scoring 26 points and grabbing 20 rebounds — as La Mirada upset Artesia 67-65.
In the California Division 2 semifinals, La Mirada faced off against Compton High School. Williams matched up with DeMar DeRozan, the 18th ranked recruit at the time according to ESPN. Though La Mirada lost 65-60, Williams went toe-to-toe with DeRozan, scoring 25 points to DeRozan’s 27. Tim Floyd, then the USC head coach, was there to recruit DeRozan, but walked up to Williams after the game.
“Honestly, I didn’t know anybody was at this school,” Williams said Floyd told him, “and then I saw you.”
Days later, Floyd offered Williams a scholarship. Months later, Williams signed a national letter to play with USC. Skyrocketing from a two-star recruit as a sophomore to grazing the top-100 as a junior chiseled Williams’ expectations of himself.
“I was always that kind of underdog, then as an 11th- or 12th-grader, that’s when I started filling out and becoming myself, and that’s when confidence took over, and I kind of excelled from there,” Williams said.
When D’ondre Wise, then an incoming freshman point guard at the University of Arizona, walked into the Richard Jefferson Gymnasium — which is 20,000 square feet and filled with 11 basketball and volleyball courts — at 11 p.m. on his first day on campus before summer training sessions started, he spotted a player practicing alone, firing jump shot after jump shot.
Wise didn’t know who Derrick Williams was — no one did. Williams wasn’t even supposed to go to Arizona. He initially committed to USC. But when Tim Floyd was found to have been providing impermissible benefits to players, and it became clear USC was likely going to get hit with sanctions, Williams committed to Arizona because it was close to home.
“Did we think we were getting a version of the McDonald’s All-American or Pac-10 Rookie of the Year? Absolutely not,” said Sean Miller, who took over at Arizona that year after four years at Xavier University. “But we knew we were getting a talented player. And quite frankly: What did we have to lose? Based on how much time we had, we were just trying to build for the future.”
Williams’s freshman season started as expected. In his first two games, he scored 8 points against Northern Arizona and 10 points against Rice. Then, in the first game of the Maui Tournament against 10th-ranked Wisconsin, the Badgers double-teamed senior point guard Nic Wise. Williams exploded for 25 points, going 6-of-7 from the field and 13-of-21 from the free throw line.
“We thought he was a good player,” D’ondre Wise said, “but we didn’t know he was gonna be a superstar until that game.”
Realizing his luck, Sean Miller implemented into his motion offense more plays for Williams. Williams rewarded him. As a freshman, Williams led the team in points (15.7) and rebounds (8.1), the bright spot on a team that otherwise finished with 16 wins and 15 losses.
The next season, Miller drew every play for Williams. He became more of a perimeter threat, improving his 3-point percentage from 37 percent to 58 percent. He also cut fat and packed on muscle — while he couldn’t bench-press 185 pounds one time as a freshman, he could do so 20 times as a sophomore — bursting from 212 pounds to 240.
On Jan. 29, against USC, Williams soared for a rebound, colliding with a Trojan. His hand snapped backward. He sat out the rest of the game, playing only 18 minutes (in which he made all of his shot attempts, going 6-of-6). It was, he originally told his teammates and the press, a sprained hand. Just a sprained hand. He simply wrapped his hand in a cast-like wrap, with gauzes and bandage, and didn’t mention it.
In the next two games against UCLA and USC, both losses, Williams struggled, averaging 11.5 points on 8-of-22 shooting. After the loss to USC, in the locker room, an infuriated Miller demanded the Wildcats improve. Some of the players fired back that they needed a backup plan when Williams went cold. Miller laughed and pointed to Williams’ numbers, rebutting that Williams was the most efficient player in college basketball. It was after these few barbs that Williams spoke up.
“Yo, I don’t really have to play right now,” Williams said. “But I’m doing this for the team, other players right now would be sitting out, but we’re a team, we’re a family, and I want to play for you guys, I know we’re trying to stick it out, make the Final Four, but I’m doing this for the team.”
Message received. Williams was willing to put his career on the line. He didn’t have to play. Had the fracture been a half-inch lower it would have required surgery, thus causing Williams’ draft stock to drop.
The Wildcats won four out of their next five games, won the Pac-12 regular season, but lost in the tournament title game to Washington. Headed into the NCAA tournament, they were seeded as a fifth-seed in the Anaheim region, a 15-minute drive from La Mirada. On off days, he worked out in his high school gym with Torres. Home provided him comfort. Arizona advanced to the Elite Eight, blowing out Memphis, Texas, and then Duke. The game against Duke — in which he scored 25 points at half and hit a 40-foot buzzer-beater — solidified Williams’ stature as a top-five pick. Kyrie Irving, meanwhile, came off the bench for the third straight game and dropped 28 points.
Arizona ultimately fell to a Kemba Walker-led Connecticut team in the Elite Eight, the eventual champions. Williams picked up his third foul with six minutes left in the first half, and it was downhill from there, as he clanked the final shot from the top of the arc.
In the locker room after the game, Williams thought about how much he poured into the season, about how he played despite a broken pinky. He blamed the loss on himself. He felt like he let his teammates down. He cried.
But his impact was felt across Tucson.
“He was the most productive player in a single season that I’ve ever coached,” Miller said about Williams. “His 3-point shooting percentage and consistency over the long season, I mean he deserved to be the number two pick. I can remember the Cleveland Cavs really scratching their heads on who to pick: Kyrie or Derrick? I would say it was a split decision, in my opinion.
Derrick Williams was one of the greatest college players of that decade. There’s no arguing his efficiency, his winning nature, and his consistency. I mean, it was just a spectacular nine months.”
Declaring for the draft shouldn’t have been a difficult decision — he was at least a top-four pick, according to draft experts. But what if he fell? If one thing was for sure, Derrick Williams did not want to be drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves, who owned the number two pick.
Because Williams told him to, Rob Pelinka asked David Kahn, then Minnesota Timberwolves GM, to pass on him. While the Timberwolves were overflowing with frontcourt depth, the Utah Jazz, who owned the number-three pick, were not. But Kahn wanted the best available player, so he drafted Williams.
While Williams wanted to play the three, envisioning himself as a do-it-all player like at La Mirada and Arizona, Rick Adelman had different ideas, insisting Williams play the four. Before his rookie season, Derrick Williams passed Adelman in the Minneapolis apartment complex where they both lived.
“Hi, coach!” Williams said.
Adelman looked at him, kept walking, and kept quiet. This encounter turned out to be a metaphor for what was coming.
“Off the court, [Rick Adelman] could be a little antisocial,” Malcolm Lee, then Timberwolves rookie, said. “I just think that’s how he was personally, he just really didn’t know how to relate to people outside of basketball. But on the court, he could joke a lot. So he was a polar opposite on and off the court.”
Thrust into action as the backup power forward for most of the season, Williams struggled on both ends. Defensively, he lacked the length and muscle to defend the likes of Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge and Zach Randolph. Offensively, his inconsistent jump shot limited him.
Minnesota’s thinking, though, was that Williams was supposed to be the guy who could shoot. He’d shot 58 percent from 3-point territory as a sophomore, hadn’t he?
Right before pre-draft workouts, Williams switched trainers, at the recommendation of Pelinka. The new trainer overhauled Williams’ shooting form from a set-shot to catch-and-rise.
“At the end of the day, that’s when I messed up a little bit because I didn’t speak up a little bit,” Williams said. “I went from just being on the basketball team at Arizona, thinking I’m going to stay four years, to the best agents calling me, saying they can do this, that, and if you’re not prepared for that, it can be overwhelming.”
As a direct result, Williams shot 27 percent from 3 as a rookie. He was labeled a “tweener” — too slow to defend opposing guards, too small to challenge opposing forwards.
“What I did bring to the table, it wasn’t in at the time,” Williams said. “I felt like what I could bring to the table was that I could play multiple positions, and bring guys like Aldridge, Griffin, slower 4s out, kind of like I did in college. With the mix of Kevin Love, Anthony Randolph, Michael Beasley, it just wasn’t a lot of space. So that didn’t really make sense to me.”
There was turbulence throughout the season with teammates, too. When Williams did play with Love — which was rare — the veteran, who had led the league in rebounds the year prior, would chide Williams for stealing his rebounds. At the end of the season, Williams thought he had played reasonably well given the circumstances. Adelman disagreed, blasting his lack of consistency and confidence.
Over the offseason, Adelman demanded Williams lose at least 15 pounds, to drop from 240 to 225 pounds. Williams took up rigorous boxing and cycling sessions in addition to revitalizing his diet. Shedding weight did little to help, though. To start the next season, in the first nine games, he averaged 10.3 points on 35.6 percent shooting, including an 0-for-10 performance against the Bulls.
In the tenth game, he finally found his footing, scoring a career-high 23 points on 8-of-16 shooting.
Then, he received his first DNP of his career, and another one the next game, and two more in the next five games. Adelman never told him why. Williams would go home to his Northeast Minneapolis apartment, feeling disappointed, frustrated, confused, realizing he wielded little control over his professional career.
“It was almost like a slap in the face,” Williams said. “It wasn’t like basketball to me anymore; it was a business.”
“I just saw a frustrated guy who had a lot of pressure at the number two [draft] spot,” Lee said.
When Williams got minutes, he produced, but his playing time was inconsistent. One game, he would play 30 minutes, the next he wouldn’t take off his warmups.
“I remember that being a big frustration for him,” Lee said. “When you’re dealing with a situation like that, it’s hard to be happy. He didn’t understand why.”
But going into his second year, Williams stayed ready. The morning after games, he would watch film, soaking in tips from Wise, who had become an assistant coach with University of Minnesota. When he wasn’t watching film, he would be getting in extra shots, extra lifts with Lee.
When Kevin Love suffered a season-ending hand injury in the 30th game, Williams stepped up. In the final 47 games, all of which he started, Williams averaged 13.9 points, on 43.1 percent shooting, and 6.3 rebounds.
In his mind, he was getting the opportunity he finally deserved. One game, on February 8, against the New York Knicks, he dropped 19 points on 8/17 shooting in 33 minutes, out-dueling Carmelo Anthony. Watching the game on TV, Wise texted Williams.
“Great game,” Wise texted Williams.
“That’s the level I’m going to get to, like Carmelo, I’m on my way,” Williams responded.
Sixteen games into his third season, Derrick Williams learned from his teammates that he’d been traded to Sacramento. Though he wasn’t surprised — the random DNP-CDs fired off warning flares — no executive notified him that he was on the trade block.
“Man, it’s not as cold!” Williams told reporters when he arrived in California.
He was excited for a new beginning, a fresh start. Plus, he thought he would mesh well with Sacramento’s rising core, featuring DeMarcus Cousins, Ben McLemore, and Isaiah Thomas. In one early game, Derrick Williams — now the starting small forward — dropped 31 points, a career-high, on 12-of-16 shooting. After the game, he bought $200 worth of In-and-Out for customers behind him in line.
The next day, the Kings traded for Rudy Gay, a 27-year-old fringe all-star. Williams felt let down, confused, frustrated. Again. This time, sitting in the living room, Williams vented freely.
“What the hell? What’s going on? Where’s my time to shine?”
Over the next 25 games, he came off the bench, averaging 9.3 points on 44.9 percent shooting and 4.6 rebounds in 25.8 minutes.
In the 26th game, the Kings were up 95-67 against the Bulls with three minutes remaining. Williams swiped a crosscourt pass from D.J. Augustin, streaked to the hoop with no one in front of him and picked up his dribble at the free-throw line. He threw the ball off the backboard. As he leaped, the ball sailed over his head. After air balling the attempt, he moped back on defense.
The next morning, Williams’ fumbled dunk appeared on Shaqtin’ a Fool.
The game after the botched dunk attempt, Williams didn’t play at all. In 52 of the next 60 games, Williams came off the bench and averaged 8.0 points on 42 percent shooting in 24.3 minutes. Even then, he made a lasting impression on his teammates.
“Derrick was a freak of nature, he literally could do anything on the basketball court,” said Orlando Johnson, who played with the Kings for the final seven games of Williams’s second season with the Kings. “His talent was just off the charts. When he got it going, he could fire with the best of them, he could go inside and outside. Really good help-side defender, too.”
In the first 11 games of the next season, Williams received four DNP-CDs. Then, before the 24th game, coach Mike Malone was fired. Before the 53rd game, coach Tyrone Corbin was fired. In came George Karl. With each coach, there was a new offensive philosophy, defensive strategy, motivations. Williams had a hard time adjusting.
“For us, it’s very tough,” Jason Thompson, the starting power forward on the Kings at the time, who played under seven coaches in seven years, said. “You try to be so focused, so mindful, but you look back at it now, the situations we were in, having all those different coaches, systems, for us to still hold afloat, for us not to go crazy, for us not to be in the news for bad things like that, it speaks volumes.”
Williams kept pushing. After practice, he would play one-on-one with Ben McLemore. And he excelled when provided another opportunity. Late in the season, with the Kings out of the playoff race, Karl decided to sit Rudy Gay for the season. In came Derrick Williams. Again, he showed flashes and his confidence rose to the highest point since he was at Arizona.
“I didn’t care who was playing, who isn’t playing, I’m gonna play,” Williams said.
Behind the wide smile, though, Williams often was hiding his true feelings.
“I got to a point where I didn’t even like basketball,” Williams said. “I might not have said it, but people knew that I was like … f***ed up. But at the end of the day, that’s me. I’m always gonna smile. Because there’s always someone doing worse.”
After his second season with Sacramento, Derrick Williams sat at his house in Los Angeles, when he picked up his phone.
“Phil Jackson wants to talk,” Pelinka said.
“When?” Williams asked.
“Tomorrow,” Pelinka responded.
There was one more flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Hanging up the phone, Williams jumped up, rushed to the bedroom, grabbed his backpack, and stuffed it with clothes. Williams could not miss the flight. Not only was Jackson Williams’ idol growing up — as the coach of his favorite team, the Lakers — but the newest general manager of the Knicks.
During their meeting, Jackson, then general manager of the New York Knicks, told him that the Knicks wanted — no, needed — him. They expected him to play hard, make shots, rebound consistently. Jackson offered him a two-year, $10 million contract. Williams accepted without second thoughts. He was ready to play in a bigger spotlight. He also felt like he finally had a boss in the NBA tell him what he needed to improve without concealing an agenda.
“That summer, I really worked my ass off to really prove that I’m a legit player in the NBA,” Williams said. “I wanted to prove that you can’t just leave me out there on the court and expect nothing to happen.”
In his debut with the Knicks, Williams scored 24 points on 8-of-17 shooting in 21 minutes, leading the team — which had Carmelo Anthony and Kristaps Porzingis — in scoring. He felt like he was fulfilling Jackson’s trust.
The opportunity quickly vanished. He only received 20 minutes once in the next 26 games. After receiving fewer than 10 minutes in five out of eight contests, Williams was benched in the 16th game. He had no idea why. Derek Fisher didn’t even tell him he wouldn’t be playing. Jackson disappeared.
Here we go again.
“[The DNP] was just out of nowhere,” Williams said. “I didn’t know what it was for, so that’s always been something that’s bothered me a little bit. But at the same time, you can’t cause a scene. It’s something that happens. If that’s how the coach feels, that’s how the coach feels, I can’t make him play me like that. But I took that to heart. I was frustrated.”
He snuck back into Fisher’s rotation when Anthony was injured, dropping 31 points on 11-of-17 shooting in 31 minutes in the 31st game of the season.
“You know what, I don’t care who’s in the way,” Williams said. “I don’t care if it’s Carmelo, I don’t care if it’s Phil Jackson, I’m just gonna play. I don’t care if I turn it over, throw it over the basket, I’m just gonna play basketball. That’s what my mindset was from that point on: I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what people think about me, say about me.”
Off-the-court incidents, though, stained an otherwise solid season for Williams. One night, after a win, Williams went out to a club in New York. When he came home, he went to sleep. The evening after, he found his safe empty, $750,000 worth of his jewelry gone. Two thieves reportedly robbed him. The press found out. The New York Post cited “two anonymous sources,” saying Williams brought two girls home, and they turned out to be notorious jewel thieves. In the initial article, Williams declined to comment. Now Williams says “three people went into my house, while everybody was asleep and stole my stuff with ski masks and stole my stuff.”
He believed the sources were members of the New York Police Department, who were searching his house after he notified them of the theft. The police, he said, told the story wrong. Fortunately, he had insurance and the city paid him back in full. But it was too little, too late: rumors were already circulating about Williams.
Piling onto Williams’ misfortune was another story in which he was falsely included just a few weeks later. It was 4:25 a.m., the morning after a win. Williams was sound asleep in his bed in his Manhattan apartment. His teammate and close friend Cleanthony Early was outside a strip club in Queens when a group of masked robbers demanded he hand over the gold he was wearing. They shot him in the leg. Early was rushed to the hospital and survived. Williams woke up at 4:30 a.m. to his phone blowing up.
“People were asking if I was with him,” Williams said. “I’m like: I’m in my bed. People just take stuff and run with it. At the end of the day, I know what happened and that’s all that matters.”
Added up, both stories shaped the perception that Williams was a troublemaker, a bad influence unfit for the locker room.
“That’s what bothered me for a long time: People looked at me a certain way,” Williams said. “I don’t care what people look at me like now. But at that point in time, that’s not what happened. But the best advice I got was: Don’t say anything. Looking back at it now, maybe I should have something like: Everything you’re reading about is false. I should have defended myself. Instead of letting people come up with a story however they want. So yeah, I think that hurt me a little bit.”
If Williams’ play wasn’t affected by either incident (it wasn’t), his reputation around the league was. With the Knicks going in another direction — adding multiple small forwards in free agency — Williams opted out of his contract. Meanwhile, Williams watched as Kyrie won the NBA championship, sinking the game-winning three-point shot in Game 7.
In January 2016, 80 minutes prior to a home game, Derrick Williams could be found upstairs in the American Airline Arena, competing alongside Miami’s other bench players in pickup games — one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three.
You can’t guard me. None of you can.
He had signed a one-year, $5 million contract with the Heat before the 2016-17 season, reasoning that the Heat presented the most stable culture. The team offered state-of-the-art facilities and an experienced coaching staff. But when the season started, Williams played sparsely. He kept pushing, if not to earn minutes on the Heat, then to stay ready for the next opportunity. On off-days, he worked out every day at 6 a.m., then again at 2 p.m.
“I worked out, worked out, worked out, to where people were like: Are you OK? I know how they’re gonna treat me, so I’m gonna get ready for whoever calls me next, that was my mindset,” Williams said.
He had been asking Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra for a chance to prove himself for weeks — if not months — and when nothing came of it, Williams finally asked Pat Riley to be released. Riley obliged. Williams was a free agent again.
The Denver Nuggets and Brooklyn Nets offered him guaranteed contracts, while the Cleveland Cavaliers offered him a 10-day and an immediate spot in the starting lineup. But things started off slowly. He wouldn’t shoot at first. He was shy. Too shy. Turned down too many open shots. Set too many screens. Years of random DNP’s, coaching changes, and inconsistent minutes stunted his confidence. It took a threat from Kyrie, LeBron, and Love — Shoot or find yourself riding the bench — for Williams to start firing.
In the first 10 games, all starts at the small forward position, Williams played well enough to earn compliments from LeBron, who wanted the Cavs to keep him. After two 10-day contracts, the Cavaliers signed him for the rest of the season. He felt like he was carving out a niche as a solid role player. He was happy, comfortable.
Then, the Cavaliers shortened their rotation in anticipation of the playoffs. In the final 21 games, Williams received six DNPs, and when he did play, he mostly played 10 minutes or fewer.
The Cavaliers marched to the finals, where they fell to the Golden State Warriors in five games.
“Then free agency comes and I’m a free agent, and that’s when it hit me: OK, I have to change my mindset. Something has to happen,” Williams said. Four months passed and the NBA marched on while Williams sat around in his home in Houston, teamless and hopeless.
The Cavaliers decided they were moving in a rebuilding direction after LeBron bolted for Los Angeles, which meant Williams was no longer necessary to their plans. He assumed his mid-season performance would warrant a contract from another team. It didn’t. His NBA career was over. Meanwhile, Kyrie engineered a trade to the Boston Celtics so he could spearhead his “own team.”
When a team in China came calling, Williams hopped on the next flight. On Dec. 31, 2017, he received a contract from the Tianjin Gold Lions, and on January 1, he appeared in his first game for the Tianjin Gold Lions.
Before long, a culture shock washed over Williams. Most of his teammates and coaches did not speak English, and the translators did little to help. Not to mention, the drastically different rules — on and off the court — shocked Williams. He didn’t know he couldn’t share the court with another American player in the first or fourth quarter.
He found himself with more downtime than ever. He was forced to find something to do besides dribble a basketball. He was forced to think, to ponder his past and to ponder his future. At a fork in the road of life, he could have folded. He didn’t. He reshaped his diet. Slept more. Matured. He started researching post-career basketball paths, and became interested in real estate.
“I worked on myself. You don’t understand yourself until you’re really far and you don’t know anybody,” Williams said. “I didn’t understand that until I went to China.”
In 15 games, he averaged 20 points on 50.5 percent shooting and 6.6 rebounds in 29.8 minutes per game, statistics that would be more impressive had he been able to play more minutes. (Pooh Jeter, an MVP candidate, another American, mostly played in the first and fourth quarters.)
But Williams had yet to figure it all out. He tried to leave the NBA behind, but then the Lakers came calling — offering him a 10-day contract — and Williams could not resist. He signed. And played all of five minutes.
When the Lakers let him go after 10 days, Williams decided he needed to forget about the NBA. He needed to find himself.
“When I told myself, ‘I’m not ready to go back to the NBA,’ that’s when everything clicked,” Williams said.
In the summer of 2018, Williams signed with Bayern Munich, a German team.
Before he left, he got a ride from one of his best friends in college, at the University of Arizona, Mario Escalante, to the Los Angeles International airport.
In the 30-minute car ride from La Mirada to LAX, Williams talked about how much different the EuroLeague was than the NBA; about how it was funny he would play for the team he loves most in FIFA; and most importantly, about how he needed to check off a two-year personal deadline if he ever wanted to return to the NBA: play hard, play consistently, and knock down shots.
“I don’t care what they pay me, none of that. I’m just going to go out there and kill, like old times,” Williams told Escalante.
In Williams first practice in Germany — the individual workouts in the morning of a two-a-day — his new teammates couldn’t help but notice his talent, athleticism — and humbleness.
“I’ve never seen his athleticism in Europe,” Danilo Barthel, then Bayern Munich teammate, said. “He was always at practice suddenly, doing a crazy dunk or something out of nowhere. He just was so explosive. He did that stuff when he was tired in the morning.”
Barthel added: “I was also really surprised how open-minded and down-to-earth he was. One thing that stood out and I was surprised by: He never wanted to have an extra role, never wanted to have special treatment. As the second overall pick, you think he comes over and wants something special, special treatment, not willing to practice hard. But he never complained. Never. He was willing to do everything.”
In his first year overseas, Williams led Bayern Munich in scoring (13.4 points), rebounds (4.2), and blocks (0.5), even though he primarily came off the bench. The team finished 31-3, won its second consecutive German title and fifth overall, and finished with its best EuroLeague record in history (14-16). Immediately after winning the German League championship with Bayern Munich, in the locker room, Williams FaceTimed Escalante, smiling with his hat on backwards and a golden trophy in his hands.
“I think seeing all the stuff he went before that, and then when I got that call, seeing him on FaceTime, when they won the German cup, is finally, not a weight off his shoulders, it was: see, we knew you had it in you,” Escalante said.
“For me? That was the best thing possible,” Williams said.
Last offseason, he fielded more offers from the NBA — even meeting with some teams in Las Vegas — but spurned the league for another year in Europe. He signed with Fenerbahce, a team in Turkey, because he wanted to play under the tutelage of a legendary coach, Zelijko Obradovic, who had won 34 gold medals, who he thought could push him to the next level, who could push him to achieve his new goals.
The night after a close loss against Maccabi Tel Aviv on Feb. 7, 2020, Williams sat down for dinner at a small restaurant in Tel Aviv with Torres and one of his former AAU teammates, Larry Anderson, who was playing in the second division in Israel. Chowing down appetizers, the conversation flowed casually, organically. After some catching up, Williams detailed the x’s and o’s of Fenerbahce’s defensive scheme, then he reached under the table to grab gifts for his friends: Kyrie Irving Limited Edition shoes.
“In my head, I’m thinking: This motherf***er is supposed to have his own brand,” Torres said.
But in Derrick Williams’s head, he had finally freed himself. For the first time, really, he was able to forget about the draft and the comparisons to Kyrie and the talk of being a bust. He could just be Derrick Williams, the starting power forward on Fenerbahce who averaged 10.5 points per game and 3.8 rebounds.
“Kyrie is a seven- or eight-time All-Star, has a championship, MVP of an All-Star game. It’s not hard for me to say that now,” Williams said. “But before? It was hard for me to say that. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. We both play basketball for our families, for a living. There’s no wrong in playing 3,8,12 years in the NBA, at the end of the day, I made it.”
“I wanted to reinvent myself to my expectations,” Williams, who recently signed with Valencia, a team in Spain’s Liga ACB League, said. “What I care about is if I’m a good person, doing the things that I love to do, and helping the people I want to help. If people don’t understand, that’s OK. But my whole journey these last two years, is just about revamping myself. A new me.”