By Lee Strawther
The Sporting Tribune
The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
Star player turned analyst, Jason Williams knows a little something about the game of basketball. Born Jason David Williams on September 10, 1981 in Plainfield, New Jersey, Jay-Will, as he’s often referred to, attended one-time powerhouse St. Joseph’s High School, an independent, all-boys Catholic college preparatory school in Metuchen, N.J., and excelled at more than just hoops.
He not only played junior varsity soccer as a freshman, and named the state volleyball player of the year during his senior year, but he also took up the game of chess.
It was basketball where Williams shined, however, and as a senior was named a First Team All-State player in New Jersey, the New Jersey Player of the Year, a Parade All-American, a USA Today First-Team All-American, and a McDonald’s All-American.
He started every game in the four years he spent at St. Joseph’s, and set school records in scoring (1,977) and steals (407). He was also named the recipient of the 1999 Morgan Wootten Award for not only his achievements on the court, but also his work in the classroom, where he graduated with a 3.6 GPA.
It was those accolades and more that landed the 6-foot-2-inch point guard a scholarship offer to play for Duke University and legendary coach Mike Krzykewski.
Upon his arrival, Williams became one of the few freshmen in Blue Devil history to average double figures in scoring and was named Atlantic Coast Conference Rookie of the Year and The Spartan News National Freshman of the Year by season’s end. His stat line read 15.5 points, 6.5 assists and 4.2 rebounds per contest.
The following season Williams started all 39 games and led Duke to the 2001 NCAA National Championship, earning NABC Player of the Year honors in the process.
By his junior year (2001-02) he was easily recognized as the best player in college basketball, and earned both the prestigious James Naismith and John R. Wooden Awards as college basketball’s player of the year, in addition to being named NABC POY for a second straight season. He graduated with a degree in sociology after the season and left the Blue Devils having scored 2,079 points, good for sixth all-time. He also had his jersey No. 22 retired on Senior Day.
Foregoing his senior season, Williams was selected with the second overall pick in the 2002 NBA draft by the Chicago Bulls, and would go by the name Jay Williams to avoid confusion as two other players in the league at the time had the same name.
He played in 75 games as a rookie, starting in 54, and after posting 10.5 points, 4.7 assist and 2.6 rebounds per game, his future was looking bright – that is until tragedy struck in the offseason.
In mid-June of 2002 Williams was involved in a serious motorcycle accident on the North Side of Chicago, striking a streetlight. His injuries included a fractured pelvis, a severed main nerve in his left leg, and three torn ligaments in his left knee, including the ACL. To say his recovery would be a painful and lengthy one would be a grave understatement.
A full four years later the New Jersey Nets announced that they were signing Williams to a non-guaranteed contract but released him prior to the start of the season. He then signed with the Austin Toros of the NBA Development League, but played in just three games and was ultimately waived by the team due to injury. Subsequently he announced that it was time to bring his basketball playing career to an end.
“If there is anything that my life has taught me is that life is unexpected and you’re not always going to know the cards that you’re going to be dealt,” he stated.
His NBA career may have been cut short, but he has still managed to stay connected with the game, working for ESPN as a basketball analyst. He’s also worked as an analyst on the CBS College Sports Network, in addition to doing stints as a motivational speaker.
Williams released his autobiography, Life Is Not an Accident: A Memoir of Reinvention, and in it he noted, “The past should be left in the past or it can steal your future. Live life for what today can bring and not what yesterday has taken away.
“My life has always had a purpose,” he added in the book. “I had just been too obsessed with trying to recover what I’d lost instead of focusing on what I’d found. That’s when I realized there are no accidents in this life.
“The choices I made were ones that reflected who I was at that time – a decision made by a 21-year-old kid whom my 34-year-old self would barely recognize.”
If anyone should know this to be true, it would be the one-and-only Jay-Will.