Point guard swap?

["Thomas Murphy" <tfmiii@worldnet.att.net>]

After watching the Lakers-Kings last night you have to wonder if Sacto would
be interested in the following:

Nick Anderson ($5,600,000) + Jason Williams ($2,554,072) for Kenny Anderson
($8,350,000)?

All the contracts expire in 2003. I think Kenny has some good bball left in
him if he's placed in the right situation and his handle might be just the
antidote to the Kings' alarming ability to turn the ball over. Williams
could use a change of scenery as well (Check out the article on Jason
Williams below ) and wouldn't Boston be the best place for him given the
3-ball philosophy of the coaching staff? (whether it's the best thing for
the Cs is another question). Hopefully his passing would be contagious. Nick
A is Jason Williams best bud and who knows - if Bryant Stith can find a
starting spot at SG in Boston, why not Nick Anderson? If Boston is hoping to
dump Kenny and avoid starting a rookie or ex-CBA at the point this might be
an option. On the other hand, it might just be best to have a clean sweep at
the PG position.

Cheers - Tom

------------------
JWon't
by Tom Friend
http://espn.go.com/magazine/friend_20010509.html
It's been 88 games now, and Jason Williams still can't get off the bench
late in the fourth quarter. We're 88 games in, and "White Chocolate" or
"White Boy" or "JWill" or "JWon't" -- or whatever his name is these days --
is absolutely no factor. He starts, but he doesn't finish, and you wonder
finally if all the pampering has taken its toll.

They're afraid of him, you know. They're afraid he'll snap. We're talking
about his handlers here; we're talking about his agent, his daddy, his
brother. They'll all tell you, "Don't ask him about his mother." Or, "Don't
ask him about the weed he smoked." Or, '"Only ask about basketball." And you
start wondering if he's ever going to grow up, this fragile wanna-be point
guard who his coach refuses to trust. This fragile wanna-be point guard who
is all flash and had all of two points against the Lakers Tuesday night.

He is not an awful kid, although we all know there's anger there --
ridiculous, uninformed anger. Earlier this year, at Golden State, he made
those ethnic slurs to the Asian spectators, telling them he'd shoot 'em like
in Vietnam. Someone should've made him pay for that, and we're talking game
checks, several of them. This is the son of a West Virginia cop, and he has
snapped at fans from San Antonio to Portland, and you know his daddy the cop
hated that.

"He does that, and I tell him, I don't like it, I don't like when he talks
to the crowd," says the daddy, Terry Williams. "I think it takes away from
his game, and I've told him. I say, 'You're in the game, and you're chatting
with people in the crowd during the game, it's taking away from your game.
He doesn't say anything. He listens. ... He can chit-chat with the players
on the floor and talk trash and stuff if he wants to, but I just don't think
he should talk to people in the crowd. Whether he's listening to me, that's
a different story."

Someone needs to make him listen, make him play defense, make him into a
player. Because he's 25 now, and he's already been suspended five games
under the league's drug policy, and his dog is actually named Sweet Pea
after a chronic drug user named Lloyd Daniels. He is already self-mutilating
his body. He has his right fingers tattooed with W-H-I-T and he has his left
fingers tattooed with E-B-O-Y, and it makes his daddy the cop, and his
brother, who's also a cop, cringe. "It's ridiculous,"Terry Williams says.

It's too late to do something about it now, but maybe they could've done
something back then. Back when he was a junior high and high school kid,
back when his mother and father split up bitterly. Back when he began
refusing to speak to her, back when he was ticked off because he'd heard
rumors she'd slept with another man.

They all saw him turn into a recluse then, saw him hide in a gym every
night. On the one hand, it could've been worse. He could've turned to
drinking. But he never did -- even now he won't drink beer. But by the time
he hit the University of Florida, he admits he began smoking joints, and he
admits he turned antisocial, and his father and his brother would try to
come down on him, but his father is just generally too gentle of a man. And
it was too late by then. He'd tune his father out, the same way he'd begun
to tune all you fans out by the time he got to the NBA.

You should hear him talking about autographs. He hates giving them, can't
look you in the eye when you ask for one. He's ashamed of something, maybe
himself, but he's 25 now, and you wonder if he's going to get over it, if
he's ever going to grow up.

"There's some crazy people around here," Jason Williams says of his
Sacramento fans, "and I'm thankful for all the fans I have and all the
publicity I get, but I just want to stay at home, and some people can't
understand that. But that's just what I want to do. People say, 'Ah, I'd die
to be in your shoes or die to have people asking me for my autograph
everywhere I go', and I tell them, no, you wouldn't. You don't want that,
you don't WANT it.

"Sometimes it's annoying. Any little kid that asks for an autograph, I'm
going to say yes, unless I'm at the mall or something. 'Cause if I tell a
little kid yes at the mall, then I'll have a line of people. I just try to
tell them, no, I'm sorry, I don't do that. But I'll shake your hand.

"And I'm apologizing to you for nothing, really. And then if they say,
'Well, why won't you sign?' Well now I'm going to be an a------. Because I
don't have to tell you why. Who are you? You know what I mean? I'm being
nice enough just to shake your hand, and to tell you I'm sorry for nothing.
So don't disrespect me when I tell you, 'No, I'm sorry, I don't do that.'

"Everybody thinks I should give an autograph whenever they ask. And
everybody thinks I should be the way they want me to be. But I'm not going
to do that. I'm me. I'm going to be me. Just like Slim Shady says, 'I am
what you say I am.' Or whatever."

So, that's why his father moved 3,000 miles to Sacramento three years ago,
to see that his son behaved. To be there when the walls collapsed around
him. Because, after his amazing rookie season, that's what's happened. Jason
didn't work hard the summer after his first season, which is why his
sophomore NBA season was a bust. He did work hard last summer, but he's
still the same inconsistent guy. You wonder why. His coach pulls him out of
games for hoisting absurd 30-footers, and he still doesn't stop hoisting.
His coach, Rick Adelman, is the only one who seems to be trying to crack the
whip. His father won't do it. He lends an ear, but he doesn't want to tell
him the harsh truth. It's too bad.

Sometimes, his agent Bill Duffy tries to get through to the kid. But he
seems misguided, too. Before we at the magazine interviewed Jason earlier
this season, Duffy was adamant that there be no questions about Jason's
mother, that there be no reference in our story to his mother. "If he sees
something about his mother, he'll crack," Duffy said. "I'll have to pick up
the pieces. He's doing so well. Don't ruin it. Don't set us back."

So Bill Duffy refused to trust us, and he wouldn't let us do a cover shoot
with Jason because of it, and he protected him like a 12-year-old, and if
Jason can't be asked a question about his mother at 25 years old, then what
can the Sacramento Kings truly expect of him, in the playoffs, at crunch
time?

His teammates aren't helping any, either. Chris Webber doesn't tell Jason to
suck it up and play defense and share the ball, because Chris Webber is
Jason's guy, and Chris Webber is not going to do what Charles Oakley did to
Vince Carter.

"I mean, you can't exaggerate how close we've become," Webber says of
Williams. "Since the first day. Since I did the first drill with him I knew
it was going to be something special with me and him. I knew it. Just the
way he handled the ball and wore his shorts and wore his shirt, probably the
way that not most traditional people would like. But I knew I could tell by
his style that he wasn't afraid, and that's all you can ask for.

"I just remember him being himself, that little swagger. It may appear to
some to be lackadaisical, but it's just really him getting into his groove.
Just watching him, I remember him just showing what he had.

"And the black guys, when they saw him play, they weren't saying, 'He plays
black,' they were saying, 'Jason's got game' or 'He played in playgrounds.'
And that's about it. And that's the first thing I noticed about him. Like I
said, the way he wore his clothes. It wasn't that he wore 'em like a black
guy or baggy. Guys at Michigan wore their shorts baggy that way. White or
football players. It's a fraternity of athletes that kind of have that ...
we're different than the other athletes. He's in that group of athletes that
feel like, yo, I'm not just an average athlete, I've got to do this. I'm
trying to take my game to another level.

"And I think all my friends, whether it's been at the barber shop or my
buddies that have met him, they love his game. They'll say, 'That white boy
can play.' That's about the extent of it. Or, 'Where did he learn those
moves or what does he do to get the handles like that?' "

What Webber says is well and good, and Williams truly is a remarkable
playground player, from the elbow passes he did in the rookie all-star game
a year ago to the drop-kick passes he does in practice. And there's the time
he bet teammate Vlade Divac he could bank three shots in a row off the 24
second clock and into the hoop. He missed the first one on purpose, just so
Vlade would go ahead and bet him. And then when it was an official bet,
JWill hit three in a row.

He should be the next white Globetrotter. But the thing is, Jason Williams
says he wants to play in the NBA, wants to play at crunch time, wants to be
the man with the ball. That's why he took that ugly three-point shot at the
end of one playoff game against Phoenix and that's why he challenged Shaq on
a late drive in Game 1 against L.A. And it's amazing he's even been in the
game at those times, because on Tuesday night, once again, Adelman wouldn't
use him, wouldn't dare use him.

And so Jason Williams slouches on the bench now, with a towel draped over
his head, in full pout position, and you are hoping and praying somebody,
anybody will come over and say, "Sit up straight. Sit up straight, once and
for all." It has to happen. One of these days, it has to.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at
tom.friend@espnmag.com.