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" It&amp;#039;s dark outside, Super Cracker, so you keep playing even after the blisters pop. You strap on your daddy&amp;#039;s work gloves and keep dribbling, slapping the ball up and down the floor, paddling it between your knees, over and over, until your hands float free, separate from you, and nothing hurts at all.  Inside the gym, rows of halogen lights buzz in the rafters, air rushes between your crooked teeth, blood hums in your ears, and the hardwood yelps under the soles of your shoes. Nonmarking soles. Always nonmarking, because if you leave any evidence--if anybody finds out you were here--they might change the locks and take away your world.  Somewhere outside the gym, your parents are fighting, because tonight your mother will sleep next to another man. Day will bring no peace, because you will fall asleep in class--school is foolishness, you always say--and people who can teach you nothing will raise their voices in frustration. But none of that matters, because you are not outside now. You are in the gym, where you slip past an invisible defender, pass the ball to yourself, drive to the hoop, and send the ball up, rolling off the tips of four fingers, then three, then two, then just the one loose-gloved middle finger, up toward the halogen lights, up toward the basket . . . and off the rim, an ugly embarrassment of a shot. You curse yourself like any fourteen-year-old would--&amp;quot;Son-of-a!&amp;quot;--and watch the ball roll to a stop. You do not curse the ball. The ball is perfect and without blame, and so you pick it up and grip it tight. Then the world turns, a decade walks by, and you find yourself standing with that ball still in your hands. Everything has changed and nothing has changed. You have failed life in every aspect but one, the one that matters to you most, here on the court. Without your daddy&amp;#039;s gloves, you hardly have to dribble the ball at all--you just stroke it and it follows, like a faithful pet. The floor is the same, the goal is the same, but now thousands of people press in--and pay good money--to watch you, Super Cracker. Not that anybody uses that nickname anymore; now you&amp;#039;re White Chocolate.  So you do it all again: slip past a defender, pass the ball between your legs, behind your back, into your own hands, and send it up--whang!--again. You curse yourself--&amp;quot;Bitch!&amp;quot;--and watch the ball roll to a stop. When the game is over, your mother cries like a siren in the crowd, &amp;quot;Jaaaaason,&amp;quot; as though you would suddenly forgive her and utter her rusted name, but you walk by without turning. You walk until you are alone, and when no one is around, you pull on the old work gloves and pick up the ball again. Because you love the ball, and, by God, it loves you back. The sun is barely up, and Jason Williams already reeks. Although he is alone in the Sacramento Kings&amp;#039; weight room, he has tainted the air with buckets of sweat and deodorant. Wincing, he steps off the leg press and looks back at it: &amp;quot;Bitch.&amp;quot; A drop of sweat has dangled from the tip of his nose throughout the dumbbell sets and leg reps, but Williams seems too pressed for time to wipe it away. He takes long strides from machine to machine, checking off each exercise on a list he carries curled in his hand, unaware of the sweat drop, unaware of the stink, unaware of the world. His appearance is so plain, so unremarkable, that he could be a composite of the average American man, a guy who could rob banks and never be picked out of a suspect lineup: a smidgen over six feet tall; hair the color of straw, not cut short or long; not muscular, not lanky, 190 pounds. White.  There are tattoos--a panther clings to his right shoulder, a dragon to his left, a fist-sized eyeball just above his right nipple, and the Chinese character for crazy on his right forearm--but they seem more helpful than rebellious; without them, he would be easily lost in a crowd. As other players trickle into the weight room, they pick up golf clubs and practice their swings, compare handicaps, watch television. They cast aspersions on one another&amp;#039;s sexual preferences and make fun of one another&amp;#039;s wives. Throughout this, Williams squints straight ahead, lifting, rowing, pressing, careening through the room as though it were empty. He keeps his chin jutted out, almost even with his thin nose. His face would seem hawkish except for a touch of Howdy Doody around the ears. His hands and feet are huge, like a puppy&amp;#039;s, as though he&amp;#039;s still got a lot of growing to do. Later, lying on a table in the rehab room, as Pete the trainer massages goop into his back, Williams loosens up and looks around the room. &amp;quot;I try to keep up with the golf stuff, handicaps or whatever,&amp;quot; he says. His eyes are pale blue, like the hottest part of a flame, but right now they&amp;#039;re half hidden under sleepy lids. Life seems to barely keep Williams awake, and golf does less. &amp;quot;It seems kinda slow. And it needs . . . I don&amp;#039;t know, it needs defenders or something.&amp;quot; Williams&amp;#039;s love for basketball is monogamous. He loves the running, the dribbling, the passing. He loves the ball itself. And why not? Without basketball, he would be slowly dying in a West Virginia coal mine right now instead of lying on a padded table in Sacramento while Pete gently attends to a &amp;quot;tweak&amp;quot; in his back. Thanks to basketball, Williams counts his money in the millions, travels the world, and plays on television before millions of pop-eyed viewers. Williams is every sportscaster&amp;#039;s dream. His jackrabbit quickness and abracadabra passes translate well into slo-mo, assuming an elegance and artistry formerly reserved for nature shows about cheetahs and antelopes. Like that made-for-TV moment in Seattle last year when a fast-breaking Williams found himself one-on-one with Gary &amp;quot;the Glove&amp;quot; Payton, a six-time member of the NBA all-defensive team. He dribbled straight at Payton, then pulled up short and hopped, as though winding up to shoot. Payton leaned in to block the shot, but Williams had somehow kept his dribble going and blew past him. All Payton could do was stick a leg out, as though to trip the baby-faced kid. In Sacramento, Jason Williams jerseys sell for $130, twice as much as any other player&amp;#039;s on the team, and the Kings say his number 55 sold more than any other player&amp;#039;s number in the nation last year. Maybe it&amp;#039;s because he averaged thirteen points, six assists, and a couple of steals per game. Maybe it&amp;#039;s because he helped lead Sacramento to its first-ever winning record. Maybe it&amp;#039;s because his team was the only team to average 100 points a game. Or maybe it&amp;#039;s because of something harder to measure, like creativity, appearance, or a combination of both. Whatever it is, Williams stands at the intersection of two golden roads to basketball glory: otherworldly behavior on the court and hometown appeal everywhere else. That is to say, he&amp;#039;s a white guy who plays as if he were black. By the time Williams learned to dribble, the only remaining great white player was Larry Bird, by then a tower of brittle bones and sandpaper joints. As he crumbled away, Michael Jordan--a vibrant, tongue-wagging bald eagle of a man--burst onto the scene with a game that transcended race. But even so, no short, pimply white kid could ever match his dark, gold-flecked skin, could ever pull off his aerial feats, could ever be Michael Jordan. Now along comes Williams--a mop-headed corncob from rural West Virginia--with a street ball game that leaves veterans twitching. He is the perfect blank screen upon which millions of other hopeless wannabes can project their hoop daydreams: not transcendental, just common. Williams may be a blue-eyed savior, but he&amp;#039;s no flawless god. He is human. He makes mistakes. Public mistakes. He has screwed up so many times, actually, that the people around him wring their hands in fear that he will slip up again, waste his talent, squander the money, blow everything. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t like those tattoos,&amp;quot; his father, Terry, says. &amp;quot;I mean, what if he needs to go to a job interview someday? Nobody will want to hire him.&amp;quot; Williams&amp;#039;s handlers watch his every move. They have instructed him not to make any investments, strike any deals, or sign any contracts. They try to keep him out of the nearby big cities, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. They discourage interviews and public appearances, citing concern about disrupting their golden boy&amp;#039;s daily &amp;quot;regimen.&amp;quot; Ah, the regimen. It is a nose-to-the-grindstone schedule, a routine they hold sacred. And it goes like this: Work out from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Shower. Eat Chicken McNuggets. Play video games. Sleep. Sometimes it seems the game has devoured Williams whole. When he is out of the shadow of the backboards, he gives the general impression of emptiness: detached from his surroundings, slack-jawed, mumbly. But with a ball in his hands, he is electric, aware, eyes humming back and forth, arms stretching and snapping like rubber hoses, feet always making space for the ball to fly between. Once, in a game against the Washington Wizards, he drove to the basket and missed, but the journey--the innovation of it--inspired the crowd to stand and cheer. He is the flashiest, most riveting player in the game, perhaps the most promising point guard since Magic Johnson or Pete Maravich. People call him the white Michael Jordan, but that&amp;#039;s backward. Jordan&amp;#039;s gift was staying in the air while everybody else returned to earth. Williams sticks to the ground while everyone else leaps up to block shots that don&amp;#039;t exist. Lots of guys can dribble behind their backs, transferring the ball from, say, the right hand to the left. But Williams can pass the ball to himself, wrapping either arm all the way around his back, as though disconnecting it at the shoulder, to deliver the ball to the same hand that it started from. Defenders can only swat at the ball and run around Williams, this punk, this kid, this human tetherball pole, and wonder where he got his game. It&amp;#039;s midnight in Belle, West Virginia, and you sneak your dad&amp;#039;s keys off his dresser. You grab your ball and slip out the front door like a whisper. Your eyes adjust to the dark as you walk, and, looking back, you can make out the house. It is painted beige but looks gray in the dark, and it is surrounded by nothing but empty space, a parking lot on one side and a football field on the other. What a dreary place to live, right smack in the middle of the DuPont High School campus. No neighborhood kids to ride bikes with, no doors to knock on at Halloween, no place to hide from boredom or anger or loneliness. But state troopers don&amp;#039;t make much money in West Virginia, so your dad has to moonlight as an on-campus security guard. It&amp;#039;s just part of the package. Dad says your gift comes from heaven, but, boy, is he wrong. It bubbles up right here, a few dozen steps from home in an empty building with a locked door. As you feel the key go snick, something more powerful than electricity zaps your fingers, runs up your arm, and touches your brain: This is your sanctuary, your laboratory, your monastery. This is the gym. Inside, you set to work, like every night. You make a two-by-two-foot square on the wall with black tape and pass the ball to it behind your back, between your legs, left-handed, right-handed, looking away, running full tilt. Your brother is three years older than you, but you can kick his butt in basketball. That&amp;#039;s because Shawn doesn&amp;#039;t take time to practice like you do. He&amp;#039;s always doing other stuff--cutting grass in the morning, working for that lawyer guy after school, taking tickets down at the movie theater every night. He bought his own car. Paid for it himself. That&amp;#039;s cool. But he wants to go to college and all that. Be a cop like your dad, or whatever. Not you. You pull on your father&amp;#039;s work gloves, wrap ankle weights around your wrists, then dribble, pounding the ball until you can lace it through your legs as easy as a daydream. When you take off the gloves, your touch is a caress, and the ball is the object of your affections. Affections. Your mom uses that word sometimes. She has affections for that Scott guy. Screw him. Screw her, too. Someday you&amp;#039;re going to make it big, and when people open up their NBA programs to read about you, they&amp;#039;re going to see it just the way it is: &amp;quot;Age twenty-three-.-.-.-son of Terry Williams-.-.-.-knew he wanted to play professional basketball at age seven.&amp;quot; No mention of anybody named Delana Williams, formerly known as Dad&amp;#039;s wife, formerly known as Mama. It&amp;#039;s so cool in here. No nagging teachers, no fighting parents, no sound at all, except for the sweet pock-pock-pocking of the ball against the floor. It is a little odd to see legs like this, carved and pasty at the same time. Guys with this kind of definition tend to jump in a tanning bed once in a while or at least strut around in the sunshine. Williams flicks his legs back and forth in the air, lying on his back while Al the conditioning coach barks out instructions: left, right, left, right. The legs are narrow at the ankle and wide at the thigh, like a horse&amp;#039;s, but have the pallor of a hairless animal that has hidden in a dark place its entire life. The effect is heightened because Williams is lying on the floor next to second-team point guard Darrick Martin, who is black. &amp;quot;Come on, ladies,&amp;quot; Al growls. Al is a gray-haired guy with a Ph.D., and his motivational techniques lean heavily on emasculation. &amp;quot;Get &amp;#039;em up,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Faggots.&amp;quot; Williams has &amp;#039;em up, way up straight. He is several days into his training and is used to the burn. But Martin, truth be told, is suffering. Today is his first day with the Kings after a year with the lowly L. A. Clippers. &amp;quot;Gah,&amp;quot; he groans. Al is merciless, and he describes to Martin the various intricacies of the female anatomy, many of which he renames in Martin&amp;#039;s honor. There are televisions everywhere in the Kings&amp;#039; weight room, and they&amp;#039;re always tuned to all-sports channels. Right now, football highlights are playing, and Randy Moss of the Minnesota Vikings is on the screen, sprinting down the sideline at the thirty . . . the twenty . . . Williams stands up and looks alive. &amp;quot;Go, boy!&amp;quot; he shouts. &amp;quot;Dig!&amp;quot; And Moss does dig, at the fifteen . . . the ten . . . &amp;quot;Touchdown!&amp;quot; Williams shouts. &amp;quot;Where is that boy from?&amp;quot; he hollers. &amp;quot;If he can make it, anybody can.&amp;quot; Williams is a huge Moss fan, because Moss blew it in every possible way--he even did some jail time--yet he went on to silence critics and ignite professional football in his rookie year. And now here he is, a big shot, forgiven his transgressions and loved for his virtuosity. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s do butts next,&amp;quot; Al says. &amp;quot;Get &amp;#039;em up.&amp;quot; While Williams does the butt exercises, the equipment manager, a young guy named Rob, wanders over to watch. &amp;quot;Everything cool?&amp;quot; he asks. &amp;quot;Mpff,&amp;quot; Williams says, and Rob kneels down close. Politely, he begins to say something like, &amp;quot;Sorry, what?&amp;quot; but he is cut off by a great, suffocating fart. And then a second volley is launched before Rob can stagger up from the kneeling position. Williams cackles as Rob falls away, and Al laughs so hard he almost loses count of the exercises. &amp;quot;Heh,&amp;quot; Rob says, red-faced and sniffling. &amp;quot;Jason does stuff like that to keep it light, you know? It&amp;#039;s cool.&amp;quot; If Williams had a motto, that would be it: Keep it light. People around him seem trained to dilute and deflect conversation, to keep it trivial, never serious. They talk about the funky shot he made in practice, or the new baseball cap he just bought, or Muhammad Ali versus Mike Tyson. They talk about women or cartoons or rap. But if anyone mentions Williams&amp;#039;s ambitions, his money or his fame, his mother or his mistakes, he shuts down, retreats inside himself until everybody remembers to keep it light. &amp;quot;I just don&amp;#039;t go there,&amp;quot; says Troy Hanson, the Kings&amp;#039; media-relations director. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s best to stick to basketball.&amp;quot; Sometimes people from the outside world forget to keep it light, and they accidentally acknowledge that Williams is wealthy or well-known. Like autograph seekers. &amp;quot;Restaurants are the worst,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;People have no respect. They bug you.&amp;quot; To keep his profile low, he eats as often as possible at McDonald&amp;#039;s. &amp;quot;Plus, I love Chicken McNuggets,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;My favorite.&amp;quot; McDonald&amp;#039;s is the best because people there tend to keep it light. People there aren&amp;#039;t nosy, because what are the chances of bumping into someone who&amp;#039;s famous or rich? Williams is rich--six million over three years, plus a big-money shoe endorsement--but wealth is so uncomfortable, so unbearably heavy. His father once asked how big his paycheck is, and he answered, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; His bank balance? &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; Williams says he&amp;#039;s thinking about buying a mountain bike, but he hears they&amp;#039;re expensive. &amp;quot;What does a tune-up cost on one of those things?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Twelve bucks,&amp;quot; somebody says. Williams falls silent. &amp;quot;Man,&amp;quot; he eventually mutters. &amp;quot;Twelve dollars?&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s almost as much as he paid for his sweet new purple-and-gold Minnesota Vikings hat. He&amp;#039;s thinking about getting randy moss embroidered on the side, but Lord knows how much that&amp;#039;ll cost. This is high school, man, and this is the freaking life. You are a DuPont Panther now, which means you get to hang out in the gym while the sun is still shining. And you get to pass to real people instead of a square on the wall, so you do it all the time: pass, pass, pass. Especially to your buddy Randy Moss. He can dunk, and that&amp;#039;s so cool when you put it together with a trick pass. Like this one time, when you slung it behind your back, three-quarters court, and Randy caught it on stride and just stuffed it in the hoop like he was feeding a tiger. People love that crap, man. They&amp;#039;ll be watching that game on tape ten years from now. Of course, by then you&amp;#039;ll be playing in the NBA, if everything goes right. Your dad gets all bent out of shape when you cut class. He says it takes &amp;quot;commitment&amp;quot; to make it through high school, but, hey, you graduate anyway. You sign to play with Providence, but the coach leaves, so you call it off. You enroll at Fork Union Military Academy, but that&amp;#039;s no kind of life, man, so after a week you call that off, too. You sign with Marshall, but then coach Billy Donovan moves to the University of Florida, so you call it off at Marshall and follow Donovan down south. What? You&amp;#039;ve gotta sit out a season if you switch schools? No hoops for a year? Just class? Screw that. You call it off at Florida. When you get home, your brother, Shawn, hits the roof. He goes on about how he graduated from college and took a job working as a cop down in Charleston and how you keep wasting opportunities. Maybe he&amp;#039;s all uptight because he scraped and worked all this time while schools threw themselves at you, the guy who can bounce a stupid orange ball. And you screwed it up. There&amp;#039;s a 7-Eleven down the street where washed-up high school jocks hang out and drink beer. Every time you ride by the store with your dad, he glares at you and makes a crack: There they are, he says. The 7-Eleven All-Stars. You could be their captain. That hurts, man. So after three weeks of pressure from your dad and brother, you give in and head back to Gainesville. There&amp;#039;s a spot waiting for you on the team next time hoops season rolls around, but things fall apart fast: First, you fail a drug test for smoking pot and get suspended. Then you&amp;#039;re suspended again for &amp;quot;behavior detrimental to the team,&amp;quot; which means sulking on the bench. There&amp;#039;s no way you&amp;#039;ll be tested a second time, though. You&amp;#039;re a big-time athlete on a big-time campus, and the team is 13--8. They need you. So you keep hanging out with your boys, listening to their music, smoking their weed. And then--bam!--you get busted again. How much were you smoking? Too much. A lot. You can&amp;#039;t even remember how  much, but it was enough to get you booted from the team. And just like that, everything you ever wanted is gone. Your dad is embarrassed to go to work. So is Coach Donovan, because without you the team goes 1--7. You feel yourself slipping down, down past your brother, past the All 7-Eleven team, past your love for the game. You swear to God that you will never again squander your gift--never smoke another joint, never tell another lie, never take another opportunity for granted--if only you can find a job coaching high school basketball. Four months later, something happens. The NBA draft rolls around, the scouts start talking about you, and despite all your screwups, you are the seventh pick of the first round. Somehow you are a pro, a millionaire, a star. And then you remember. Basketball loves you back. &amp;quot;Jump, fag!&amp;quot; Al is working Williams hard. His black practice jersey is stuck to his chest, and his hair is plastered to his forehead. His nostrils flare when he breathes. He is tired. When he finishes the workout, he shuffles down the hall to the elevator and rides all the way to the top floor of Arco Arena, to his secret place, a place you don&amp;#039;t read about in the newspapers or see on television. The top floor is unfinished, and it looks like a warehouse full of insulation, scrap metal, and dust. Williams ambles past rows of old stadium seats, outdated computers, and assorted junk to the back, where there is half a basketball court patched together with leftover wood flooring and a goal. It is a Sacramento version of his gym back home, a place where he can lock himself away from the world, pull on the old work gloves, and caress the ball. Williams steps on the court, and the blank mask falls from his face. His flame-blue eyes roll heavenward, and he pins the ball between his palms at his chest, elbows out. For a moment, he looks like a basketball saint, praying for grace. It doesn&amp;#039;t come quickly, because his first few shots glance off the rim, sail wide, thud like bricks against the backboard. &amp;quot;Jason!&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Bitch.&amp;quot; Over and over, the ball flies up toward the hoop, until Williams&amp;#039;s arm is calibrated and his vision is focused, and he strips the net every time. He dribbles behind his back, between his legs, on and on, until his hands float free. He experiments with a move behind his back, one that will confound referees this year because he somehow arrests the motion of the ball without palming. He laughs to himself, like a little boy who knows a magic trick. There are no failing grades here, no quibbling parents, no contracts or autographs to sign, no endorsements, no drug tests. No disappointments. Everything here is light. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a38/esq1299-dec-jason-williams/>