RESILIENCE
‘It was time’ BY ADAM LUCAS // PHOTO BY MARVIN WILLIAMS
E
ven as a college freshman, Marvin Williams always possessed a uniquely mature viewpoint on life. So it’s no surprise that as he chose to end his 15-year professional basketball career this summer, he had a perfect explanation for why the time was right for retirement. “It’s more about off the court for me than on the court,” he said. “My personal life is so different now. I have two young daughters, one of whom is five years old and has a hard time when it’s time for me to go on the road. She doesn’t understand if I’m going to be gone for two nights or two weeks. That hurts me to leave my family like that. At this point in my life, actual living is more important to me than playing basketball. It was time.” That’s exactly the perspective you’d expect from a player who left Carolina after his freshman season— having never started a game, but as a national champion who was picked second overall in the NBA Draft—and then returned to Chapel Hill every summer for a decade to work towards his degree. He remains the only one and done college basketball player to earn his degree, and he also earned over $120 million during his professional career. Williams is beloved by the Tar Heel coaching staff and Carolina basketball alumni. His commitment to Carolina is tangible—the weight room at the Smith Center is named in his honor. So it’s not implausible to imagine him making his way back to Chapel Hill at some point during his retirement. For now, though, he has other ideas. “I know I want to stay around the NBA game,” Williams said. “I don’t want to coach or be in the front office. That’s too much stress. I want to find something a little less stressful. I would love to stay around basketball and teach kids about basketball. If I could do something that involved traveling and teaching kids the game, that would be awesome.”
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BORN & BRED
Marvin Williams showed his usual unique perspective when explaining his NBA retirement
