THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170499
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ED MILLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: 195 lines
One day a couple of years ago, Saunya Williams walked into a gym during a youth basketball tournament. The event was organized by her husband, whose name is synonymous with youth basketball all over Hampton Roads.
A woman recognized her.
``There's Boo Williams' wife,'' she said.
``Oh, really?'' said her friend, sizing up the young Mrs. Williams. ``How long has he been dead?''
Huh? Time out, thought Saunya. Marcellus Spencer Williams Jr. - known since infancy as Boo - was, and is, very much alive. Just turned 37, in fact.
But if you think about it, the woman made an honest mistake. In football, kids play Pop Warner. In basketball - in Hampton Roads, at least - they play Boo Williams.
Know anyone who's met Pop Warner?
``Boo Williams. They thought it was just a name we used,'' Saunya Williams said.
It's not just a name. Although to be honest, the name has become bigger than the man, who stands 6-foot-8.
``Boo Williams'' is practically a brand name. It is known at every level of basketball, from youth leagues to the NBA. It's known in Europe. The name is on the pedigree of NBA players like Alonzo Mourning, Joe Smith, Allen Iverson and J.R. Reid, who might as well wear tags that say: ``Made in the Boo Williams Summer League.''
Because of the name and all that stands behind it, the man can dial up any college coach in the country and get right through. He can do the same with an increasing number of NBA coaches and general managers. He sits on a USA Basketball committee. He takes teams to tournaments across the country, and across the world.
Occasionally, he finds it all a little hard to believe.
``You never think something like this will get this big,'' he says. ``You just start it.''
If Boo Williams could live anywhere, he'd live in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Williams played professional basketball there, and says his years in the war-torn city were the happiest of his life.
``The best, nicest people I've ever met,'' he said.
Belfast was also where Williams got his start working with kids. Pete Strickland, a former Old Dominion assistant coach now at the University of Dayton, was playing in Ireland at the time - the early 1980s - and remembers a clinic that Williams organized.
Strickland was supposed to teach the clinic, but was nervous about venturing into Belfast, the battleground between Protestant unionists loyal to Britain and Catholic separatists who want to end British rule.
Strickland arrived at the gym and was shocked to find kids from both groups, playing side by side.
``In the heart of Belfast, who's bringing the Protestants and the Catholics together, but Boo Williams?'' Strickland said.
Williams returned home and brought the Southside and the Peninsula together, under one basketball banner. He started by organizing a summer league, the kind they had in Philly and New York.
Which was very amusing to folks in Philly and New York. Howard Garfinkel, who started the famous Five-Star summer camps, was skeptical.
``He said: `It'll never work,' '' Williams recalled. ``Kids down there are too soft, too lazy. They'll never be able to compete with city kids.''
Williams' teams took their lumps in early AAU tournaments. But then a 6-foot-9 bruiser named J.R. Reid came along, and his teams began holding their own. Reid was followed by Mourning, Terry Kirby and Bryant Stith. Then came Smith and Iverson.
Williams' teams won AAU national championships in 1988 and '92, which is roughly the equivalent of winning two high school national championships. In the past decade, four players - Reid, Mourning, Iverson and La' Keisha Frett - have been considered the best in their high school class. Over the same period, no city - not even basketball hotbeds like Philly, New York, L.A. or Chicago - has produced more players of the year than Hampton Roads.
``The primary reason is Boo Williams,'' said Bob Gibbons, one of the nation's leading high school basketball scouts.
You may not think of summer as basketball season, but it is. For Williams and other AAU program directors, this is the busiest time of year.
``I could use another four or five hours in the day,'' Williams says.
It's a Thursday afternoon, and Williams is sitting in his State Farm Insurance office in Hampton. He makes his living selling insurance, but most of the phone calls coming in are basketball-related.
His phone at home rings just as often, and his bills are legendary - sometimes $600 a month.
``He has a list of people he talks to at 1 or 2 in the morning,'' says Willie Brown, who has worked with Williams' AAU program since the beginning. ``They know he's up, so they call him.''
Williams makes calls on behalf of players. A total of 242 of them have received some sort of basketball scholarship. Coaches call to ask about players. There is also AAU business to conduct, trips to arrange, a rumor mill to keep up with.
``Boo is a great dispenser of information,'' said Strickland.
Williams' AAU program is structured like a pyramid. At the bottom are the younger kids, who begin at age 10. The goal is to encourage participation.
As the players get older, the basketball gets more competitive. Williams' elite 17-and-under teams travel the nation - even the world - going from tournament to tournament.
``I played to get some exposure, and he definitely provided that,'' said Hampton High graduate Damon Bacote, a guard for the University of Alabama who played on Williams' '92 championship team.
Since April, Williams' 17-and-under boys team has been to Indiana, Kansas City, Washington and Las Vegas. Some members of the team also played in France.
On Thursday afternoon, Williams was preparing to leave for Portland, Ore., with the girls' 17-and-under team. He was planning to leave Hampton at 3 a.m. to drive to Washington, then catch a flight to Portland. From there, he'll go to Las Vegas to meet the boys team, then to Georgia for another boys tournament, then back to Hampton.
That's a lot of travel, but nothing compared to what the Mourning-Stith-Kirby team did in '88. That team was on the road 30 days straight.
``I'll never forget waking (former Old Dominion guard) Kevin Swann up one morning,'' Williams said. ``He looked up and said, `What city am I in now?' ''
Now, when his elite teams travel, Williams brings along tutors, who help the players with S.A.T. preparation.
``I used to think, `God, if the kids around here had the opportunity,' '' Williams said. ``Now, the kids around here have it if they can get their academics straight. Everybody who comes through our program has a shot.''
Shots. Williams knows shots, and shooting. As a player at Hampton's Phoebus High and later at St. Joe's, he never met a shot he didn't like.
In Hampton, there is something called the Boo Williams Complex, an outdoor court where he holds summer league games. Years ago, there was the Boo Williams Syndrome - an inability to pass the ball.
``Boo was like a deep hole,'' said Brown, who officiated some of Williams' high school games. ``When the ball went in to him, it never came out.''
Selfish behavior on the court is at odds with Williams' work off it. He runs the summer league as a non-profit organization. Kids pay nominal fees to play, but teams also raise funds through car washes, candy sales, bake sales.
Williams also has long-time corporate sponsors like Bob Tysinger, a Peninsula auto dealer, as well as Commerce Bank and Nike. Sometimes, tournament organizers will defray travel costs to get his team in their event.
He put 148,000 miles on his Acura Legend in five years, much of it on AAU business.
``Nobody could pay me to do this,'' he said. ``If I got paid, the salary would have to be enormous.''
Speaking of enormous salaries, none of the former players who made it in the NBA have given money to the league. Then again, Williams hasn't asked. Saunya Williams says she's bothered by this, because her husband is too proud to ask.
``I know Boo really busted his butt for Alonzo,'' she said. ``He took him everywhere. And when Bubba (Iverson) went to college, we drove him. It was like two parents taking their child. We stayed and got him settled in his room and everything.''
If Williams is bothered by this, he doesn't admit it.
``I'm sure if we really needed something, they'd help,'' he said. ``When I asked them to play, I asked for nothing in return.''
Not every summer league coach does the same. Urban summer basketball can be a sleazy scene, with street agents attempting to deliver players to colleges for fees; AAU coaches fighting over rising stars; shoe companies trying to horn in on the action.
``Amidst a group of unsavory characters, Boo is a shining light,'' Gibbons said.
Said Strickland: ``Boo's above board. He has kids' best interests at heart. He's fair, and he doesn't play favorites. I don't think he steers anyone anywhere unless it's late and they don't have anything.''
Williams was criticized three years ago, when Nike flew Iverson from its summer camp in Indianapolis to a Hampton court date, and back. Asked if Nike would have done that for an average kid, Williams came up with the truthful but impolitic reply that Iverson was not your average kid.
Williams likes to say that college basketball is big business. Scholarships are worth thousands. Coaches make thousands more, and depend on 18-year-old players for their livelihood.
Might as well be up front about it.
Williams has been called the Godfather of local basketball, but a better description might be an eccentric uncle. He's constantly running late, juggling phone calls, doing several things at once. He's got a gift for the malaprop - some ``Yogi Berra'' expressions, as Gibbons calls them.
Brown recalls a trip to Ireland, when late one night Williams said he wanted some soup, and asked how to cook it. Someone told him to put it in a pan, and turn on the burner.
``There was this awful smell,'' Brown said. ``Boo had cut the can open and put it in the pan.''
Bacote remembers a trip from Hampton to New Jersey. Williams got everybody piled into the van and then prepared to drive.
``He drove - from Hampton to Newport News,'' Bacote said. ``Then he got sleepy.''
Wherever the team went, Bacote was amazed at the people Williams knew: ``He knew everybody.''
While everyone knows Boo Williams, Saunya Williams is one of the few people to ever meet Marcellus Williams.
Saunya moved to Hampton from Tennessee several years ago, and was referred to a Mr. Marcellus Williams at State Farm.
``A friend of mine told me his name was Boo, and I was like, `Boo?' '' Saunya Williams recalled. ``I started telling my dad about him and right before he met him he asked me: `What should I call him? Boo? I don't know if I can call him that.' ''
He did.
``The name is kind of catchy,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/The Virginian-Pilot
Insurance is Boo Williams' livelihood, though many of the calls to
his office are basketball-related.
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