National Basketball Association

On Mo Williams, regrets and homecomings

Published Jul. 7, 2015 11:36 a.m. ET

foxsports

by Scott Sargent

Mo Williams was my first regret. The Cleveland Cavaliers were in the midst of one of the worst single seasons in NBA history and had just allowed Chase Budinger to drop 30 points on them as the Houston Rockets provided Cleveland with its 28th loss in its last 30 games. It was the night of the league’s trade deadline and Williams in street clothes nursing an ankle injury. As I stood alongside the local media conglomerate waiting on then head coach Byron Scott to emerge from the locker room to tell us that “If you look at the stat sheet, offensively, we probably should have won,” Williams was the first to exit through that thumbprint-secured wooden door. He had a smile on his face, one that would be best described as unordinary for a competitor who was undeniably living out the most nightmarish of seasons. He looked at us all, raised his left hand above his head and waved as he made his way down the hallway toward the players’ garage.

Perhaps he received some good news on his ankle. Perhaps he couldn’t believe that 19,000 fans piled in to The Q in the middle of February to watch Christian Eyenga start a professional basketball game. Perhaps delirium was just setting in. Or perhaps it was the look of a man who was just notified that he was being traded to the city of Los Angeles. And for whatever reason—one that still leads to said regret four-plus years later—I didn’t follow him down the hallway to ask. It wouldn’t be more than a few hours before news would break that Williams had been traded to the Clippers along with Jamario Moon; the Cavs would, in return, receive a well-paid Baron Davis and an unprotected first-round draft pick1, but would lose the one player who most embodied what the town was enduring post-LeBron James.

Williams was a sympathetic figure over what was undoubtedly the longest four months of his professional career. He was the star of Cavs Media Day in October of 2010, fielding non-stop questions about the team—his team—that remained in the wake of James leaving for Miami in free agency. The LeBron-based inquiries reached their peak when one local reporter, in asking Williams a question, mistakenly referred to the point guard as “LeBron.” Yet there Williams stood, lobbing out metaphor after metaphor in attempt to describe the roller coaster he had gone through over the six months prior—a 60-win season; a trip to the NBA All-Star Game; another trip to the NBA Playoffs; a crushing, drama-filled series loss to the Boston Celtics; the rug being completely pulled out from under his Nikes; the willingness to rise back up and attempt to take the reins; the hope that somehow, someway, things would not be as bad as they would seem; the whole “Cleveland against The World” point of view.

“At some point, you just have to turn the corner,” Williams said, embarking on a verbal journey in response to an inquiry as to whether or not he was “over” the summer. “You’re walking down this long hall—everybody been to high school before. You’re in this classroom all the way down the hall and you have to get to the other side of the hall. You look down this hallway and it looks so long, but once you turn the corner, you can’t see that other side of the hall any more. Right now today, we’re turning that corner to our next classroom, and we can’t see nothing but forward now. There’s no LeBron in this building. Whether you believe it or not, he’s not coming back… This is what we got. This is the hand we’re dealt and you have to play the best you can.”

Forget for a second the lack of prophecy on Williams’ part regarding James not returning to Cleveland. What Williams did do was confirm that the team would in fact have a lot of naysayers and the national media trucks would not be frequenting the team’s practice facility as much as in years past. And that “playing the best you can” bit? It’s tough to deny that Williams did just that, coming out of the gate swinging, tallying six nights of at least 20 points in November alone, including a game-winning 15-foot shot to beat the buzzer in a dramatic win over the Milwaukee Bucks. In that game, Williams took a step-back jumper over an up-and-coming Brandon Jennings, only to launch himself on top of the scorers table in celebration as a sold out Quicken Loans Arena crowd erupted around him.

Williams was Cleveland. While some of his teammates kept in touch with James or qualified his decision to leave the Cavaliers in free agency as a “business move,” it was Williams who would have none of it. He spoke openly about the pain. He pondered retirement2 On that early December night when James and the Miami Heat came to Cleveland, and several Cavaliers welcomed him back with open arms, it was Williams who wouldn’t even make eye contact with the small forward, giving him the cold shoulder at mid-court as James extended his hand for a quick low-five.

But much to Williams’ detriment, he was so Cleveland that even the will to fight and the desire to take on all opponents no matter how big or fast or strong would prove to not be enough. Unlike fans, emotionally bound beyond reproach, Williams’ talents carried value for a Clippers team looking to make a run to the postseason. There was no denying that dealing the point guard made the 2010-11 Cavaliers worse. Sure, they would go on to beat that mighty Heat team thanks to Davis and players like Ryan Hollins, providing the city of Cleveland with one of the few feel-good moments of that season, but that night was simply a small reprieve from some of the worst basketball to ever befall the city since the franchise’s inception. Also: It was Williams who enabled the Cavs to obtain that first-round draft pick—the one that would eventually turn into All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving3.

Since his departure, Williams has always made it a point to visit with Cavs staff and beat reporters whenever he would return to The Q, regardless of which team he was playing for at that time, having earnest, genuine conversations just moments before he was expected to be on the court. Mo Williams is from Jackson, Mississippi. He played college ball in Alabama, was drafted by the Utah Jazz, and has played professionally in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Portland, Minnesota and Charlotte. Yet once word of his deal with the Cavs was official, it was Williams who shot out a tweet saying that has since been shared thousands of times: He is “coming home.”

In turning down the San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks, and accepting a two-year contract with the Cavaliers, Williams will return to Cleveland as countless Cavalier fans embrace him with open arms. Nostalgic as ever, fans in Cleveland remember all of the good that Mo was a part of when he was here last. Sure, there will always be that guy who points out the occasional 3-for-15 shooting night and the lack of impact in the postseason4, but for every one of them, there will be several others who will be quick to point out that the veteran was everything this city needed when times were the toughest. It was Williams who attempted to lift us up off of the floor. It was Williams who barged into our apartments, turned on the lights and dumped cold water on us when all we wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a bottle of Bombay and a canister of Pringles. And it was Williams who attempted to take the entire town and put it firmly on his shoulders—it’s not his fault his shoulders were only so big.

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