Turning p 1 2-27-20
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Turning his
story around
He lost his dad to a senseless crime.
He lost his home, and in the process, he lost his family.
He lost basketball and his identity and his sense of self.
He has endured loss that few of us, thankfully, can understand.
And yet somehow, Johnnie Williams IV — a postgrad player on the Putnam Science Academy prep basketball team — has lost neither his way nor his will.
“He’s got stuff going on that a normal high school kid couldn’t deal with,” said PSA assistant coach Josh Scraba. “He copes with it with a smile on his face. His energy and his attitude is unbelievable.
“When we recruited him to come here, everyone said the same thing: For what he’s been through and the way he is now and the way he carries himself, no other high school kid could deal with this stuff. The things he appreciates, none of these kids understands. It’s another level. For the way he’s turned out, the kind of kid he is, everyone loves him. He’s everyone’s favorite kid. It’s an unbelievable story. He’s an awesome kid.”
The second child of high school sweethearts, Williams said things were good when he was little, his parents always showering him and his older sister with love.
“Things were fantastic. My dad would bring me things for Christmas or my birthday. He never whupped me. If we had a disagreement or if I ever did something bad, he’d come talk to me,” Williams said. “It was never bad, especially when he was there.”
But in September 2008, a few months before Williams turned 9, his father, Johnnie Williams III, was murdered. Williams III was 14 years older than his killer and used to give him rides to the store when they were younger. Williams said the killer pulled up on his father and demanded his necklace. When Williams III said no, he was shot in the chest.
Somehow, the family forged on. Williams, his mother, and his older sister all lived with his grandmother. (Williams also has a younger sister who lives with another family, and a 6-year-old brother.)
Basketball became his outlet, and he became very good at it. After a junior season in which he averaged about 18 points per game for Booker High School in Sarasota, Fla., Williams had a big summer with one of the top programs in the Nike EYBL circuit. He was on the radar of many college programs, seemingly on his way. He picked up an early scholarship offer from Florida Gulf Coast University, a top mid-major program, which actually thought Williams was going to be too good for them to stay in the picture.
But while things were coming together for Williams on the court, they were unraveling off it. He said certain family members weren’t holding up their end of the deal, and among other things, were not helping pay the monthly bills. Things were coming to a head. Finally, after a few more months, the family split up.
His mother took his younger brother and went to live with a friend. His older sister took her newborn and got her own apartment. Williams, now into his senior season, was left without anywhere to go. For a while he bounced around – from house to house, couch to couch, night to night – before moving in with his girlfriend and her family.
Williams believes his mother never fully recovered from his father’s death, which led to a lot of the issues at home. She has been in trouble with the law, he said.
“We heard about her going to jail and stuff like that,” Williams said. “Seeing my mom struggle, and when my mom had to leave, that was my lowest point because I felt like I had no parents and that I was really in this alone.”
It all took its toll on Williams on the court, too. His play dropped off noticeably, albeit understandably, and colleges stopped reaching out. After all the loss he had endured, now he was losing basketball too and all that it meant.
“Basketball is my survival,” he said. “If I don’t have that, I don’t know how I’d move around, how people would know me. When I was younger, it was just a game and a game that I loved to play. And I still do love to play it.
“But now, as I get older, it’s starting to become a meal for me. It’s my meal ticket. I have to do the best I can every time I get on the court so I can make sure I eat and my family eats.”
Yes, Williams continues to think about family, whether it is his present-day one or one of his own in the future. Both are important to him. He paused before answering most questions for this story, finding the right words to convey his feelings. But when he was asked about missing family connections, the answer was immediate and emotional.
“Yeah. I miss every morning, just waking up and seeing my whole family in the house and the things we would do together,” he said. “My grandma would teach me how to cook, and all my cousins would be in there trying to help. We would just do a lot of things together. Things just haven’t been the same.
“That’s one of my main motives of why I keep playing basketball today. Every time I step on the court, we always mold into a family. And that’s what I’ve been missing for most of my life. I’m missing a family.”
PSA teammate Mekhi Gray comes from a very different background than Williams. But the two were roommates at the start of the year and grew close. Gray knows his friend’s story and is moved by his strength.
“He’s an unbelievable character guy,” Gray said. “For him to take in all the stuff that he’s been through and then to be here, and to always have a smile on his face, it’s amazing. It’s unbelievable. He brightens everyone’s mood.”
As for the smile on his face, Williams admits it is sometimes a mask, but said that is true for all of us, really.
“Most of the time it’s genuine,” he said, “but I’ll never be 100 percent OK. I always make everyone else feel comfortable by smiling and not making everything else weird.
“It never costs to show love. That’s why I always smile. I try to think about the fact that God does things for a reason. My dad is up there in a good place and I shouldn’t be worried, it’s just about what I’m going to do down here and how I’m going to get through all of this.”
“All of this” includes the basketball portion of his life.
Williams was a virtual non-factor for PSA for roughly the first 25 games of the season, a human victory cigar, playing almost exclusively when the game’s outcome had already been decided. He was the last man off the bench and drew Did Not Play – Coach’s Decision seven times. That is not easy for anyone with even the slightest bit of competitiveness. And it’s not any easier considering Williams was so highly regarded not that long ago.
Williams did play extended minutes in a 30-point win in mid-December, scoring nine points, and firing up the crowd and the PSA bench every time the ball swished through the net.
“Johnnie is just a character, that’s my brother,” said teammate D’Maurian Williams, who in truth is not related. “He brings lots of energy, body-wise, how he talks on the court. He works hard in practice. It’s hard not to love him.”
He also endeared himself to the coaching staff with a couple of hustle plays in that game, including diving on the floor for a loose ball, an uncommon occurrence in a blowout.
Said Scraba, at the time: “He’s our 12th, 13th man, but he accepts that role like no one else could or would. It takes guys like that to make a team. If we had another guy in that role that he was playing, we’d be worse off.”
So Williams, as he has done through essentially everything else, persevered. He kept showing up to practice and outworking everybody and bringing energy every day.
And now, partly out of necessity but mostly because he earned it, Williams has found himself playing meaningful minutes — not just end-of-game minutes — in the last four or five games. He didn’t stop there, either. He cracked the starting lineup on Feb. 12 against Springfield Commonwealth Academy (and scored 13 points and provided a defensive spark in an 86-80 win) and figures to remain there.
“I’ve never had a kid like this,” said coach Tom Espinosa, who is in his 18th year at the school. “Ninety-nine percent of the kids in the world can’t do what he’s done. We’ve played 29 games, and 25 of them he didn’t have a role on this team. But he came to practice every day, worked hard, brought energy, he’s the loudest guy on the bench during games.
“For him to stay positive and keep working hard, and then start getting some more minutes and then crack the starting lineup … it’s remarkable. It’s just remarkable. Most kids would just fold. They’d pout, they wouldn’t work hard and have that energy in practice. They wouldn’t support their teammates. He never did any of that.”
Back in November, Williams said he sometimes thought about how his playing time would affect his overall situation.
“Accepting my role to come off the bench, it was hard to adjust to,” he said. “But at the same time, I had that positivity creep in my mind and basically tell me to accept my role on this team because my situation could be a lot worse. I could not be here and just be in a harder spot. I just say thank you and I’m glad I am here.”
Espinosa admitted that he was nervous to write Williams’ name on the board as part of the starting lineup against Commonwealth. He said he wrote down the other four starters but left the fifth spot blank for a while. When he did finally fill it in with Williams, and when the team walked into the locker room and saw it, there was genuine elation.
“We went crazy,” said Hassan Diarra. “I am so happy for him. I’m so proud of him. Just so happy for him.”
Said Williams, with a big smile: “That … was a pretty cool moment.”
One of the other big moments Williams will remember is an opportunity he had at the start of the season, when the team opened up with three games in the Bahamas and did some community service work in their free time. The entire team visited an orphanage and spent a few hours talking with the kids and, of course, shooting some hoops.
“Johnnie was incredible with them,” said Heather Stewart, PSA’s director of Marketing and Recruiting, who organized the visit. “He gelled with all the kids. Some of the other guys on the team, I had to tell them, ‘Come on, talk to these kids, interact, that’s why we’re here.’ Johnnie wasn’t one of them. He jumped right in. Right in.”
Williams was taken a little aback by the whole thing. It did bring back some of his past, and he realized in some of those moments how fortunate he was to be where he is.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “I just saw a couple of kids that needed help and some of them could use the help that, based on what I went through, I saw that I could make an impact in their lives. I know that sometimes it just takes a word or two or just play with them to make them feel something.
“I am more appreciative of things. I’ve got somewhere to eat here. I’ve got somewhere to sleep here. Every day. After I’m done eating, sometimes it hits me. I’m not used to eating like that, every day. Always having a set up meal for me every day…I always had to go get what I wanted to eat, and even then, sometimes there was nothing. Now I just come into the cafeteria and it’s made for me to eat.”
Through the years, Williams has stayed close with his grandmother, Margaret Jackson, and he keeps her words of encouragement closer. Sometimes it is just that word or two, like those he spoke with some of the orphans.
“Growing up damn near by myself, maturing, it was hard,” he said. “Whenever things got bad for me, and I’d get in a dark place when I was overwhelmed or I just didn’t know what to do because usually your dad had the answer for everything…my grandma would tell me, ‘Johnnie stay on the positive route, don’t listen to any of that negativity, that’s the devil trying to get to you. Just keep the negative stuff out of your head and you’ll make it wherever you want to go.’”
Jackson introduced Williams to God and religion when he was young, maybe 6 or 7, he said. She made him read the Bible with her and memorize verses that she thought could really help him in his life. She took him to church and got him involved with people praying and talking about the things they had to deal with and how they found strength to persevere.
Williams continues to lean heavily on his faith today. Gray said Williams talks about how God is on his side and so everything is going to work out.
“God is a big part of my life and always will be,” Williams said. “He helped me stay even-minded and not get too high or too low. The older I got, the more I started talking to Him alone and by myself.
“The whole time that I was going through the hard times, I would talk to Him, He would still get me through it. It’s never been anything that I couldn’t get through.”
That continues to be the remarkable story of Johnnie Williams IV, the young man who can get through seemingly anything. No matter how many times he gets kicked to the ground, he gets back up, and with a smile on his face. There’s no thought of “why me?” or of giving up or just how – HOW? – this all happened.
“I really just think of my dad a lot,” he said. “I just think about it like, ‘You’re really going to quit all this and go the bad route?’ And your dad is just looking right at you. It’s like, why do all that instead of turn the story around and make something positive out of it?
“I’m standing here today, I’m strong, I’m healthy, I’m feeling good. I love the fact that I’m feeling like that instead of feeling down and letting it affect my life.”
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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