S4E8 Scott Williams – 3x NBA Champion

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About Our Guest

From scottwilliamsbasketball.com:

Scott’s story is one of hope, tragedy, and redemption

Scott attended and played basketball for Glen A. Wilson High School in Hacienda Heights, California. He led the 1986 squad to the 1986 C.I.F State Championship Title. Williams was named a McDonald’s All-American in 1986 before enrolling into the University of North Carolina. From 1987-1990 Scott attended and played basketball UNC. He was known for his rugged play and his high shooting percentage. Scott was also Dean Smith’s first recruit from the West Coast.

Scott’s parents died on the first day of practice October 15, 1987, when his father shot and killed his mother then turned the gun on himself. He was 19 years old and his coach Dean Smith notified him of the tragedy. He credits his UNC family for helping him through that difficult time.

Scott went on to win three world championships playing alongside Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin for the Chicago Bulls. In all, Scott played 15 seasons in the NBA.  After his playing career  he became a NBA analyst with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Milwaukee Bucks, and Phoenix Suns.

15 year NBA legend & 3X World Champion

– Chicago Bulls ( 1991 – 1994)
– Philadelphia 76ers (1995 – 1999)
– Milwaukee Bucks (1999 – 2001)
– Denver Nuggets (2001 – 2002)
– Phoenix Suns (2002 – 2004)
– Dallas Mavericks (2004)
– Cleveland Cavaliers (2004 – 2005)

During the 2012–13 season, Williams was an assistant coach for the Idaho Stampede in the NBA Developmental League.

Prior to the 2013–14 season, Williams was hired as an assistant coach for the Milwaukee Bucks under Larry Drew.

Scott is currently the game analyst for the Grand Canyon Antelopes men’s basketball games in Arizona and is also the Executive Vice President and Partner of Anytime Media and Security. 

Learn more about Scott at ScottWilliamsBasketball.com and on Social Media

Episode transcript (generated by AI):

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Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (00:06):
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Voice over (male) (00:28):
The American Hero Show featuring Travis Mills from generals to grandparents, superheroes to superintendents, heroes come in all shapes and sizes. This is the American Hero show.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (00:52):
Williams takes a shot. What hits it? Nails it. Champion. Lemme tell you something ladies and gentlemen, we are far to be here. Tim has been, is so excited for this interview. Very, very excited. I mean, he has no more fingernails like me, but he bit ’em all off where mine are just gone because the nerves literally chomping at my nails. Yes, the nerves as well of what you’re going to say too. Not a one, not a two, but a three times a champion. NBA champion. Champion. That’s right. World champion, as you said. And on top of that, a bestselling author, right? A bestselling author with great glasses and a wonderful personality. Yeah. Listen, we’re going to forgive him for being late. We got to pick on him a little bit. Just a little bit. We haven’t really know him that well, but we’ve already have something up on him, which is great.

(01:38):
Which actually, I’ll tell you what, he did show us that he’s going old school with a calendar. I mean, all my stuff’s in my phone, but he’s going old school with it, which is awesome. I love it. And he went and bought a special calendar because of all these requests he’s getting. So go ahead. You know what, Tim, you take this one, Bubba, you take this one. Well, it’s, it’s pretty awesome because I watched this guy play. I was a Bulls fan until I was sick and freaking tired of the Bulls winning every single year. But I loved watching this guy play, and this is back when I thought, I think basketball was in its heyday, was when Scott was playing and that team that he was on was just, I can’t wait to ask him questions on this, but he’s a three time NBA champion. You said it. He’s a bestselling author. Just one of the toughest guys I ever watched play the game. And just from every interview I’ve heard an awesome dude to talk to. I’m not going to introduce him to you, Travis. No. Like last time, ladies and gentlemen, Scott Williams, welcome to the program. What’s up, Scott,

Scott Williams (02:35):
Tim and Travis. Thank you guys so much for having me on the American Hero Show. I want to apologize big time. I dropped the ball, I turned it over. It was a live ball turnover. I was scrambling trying to get back on defense and I gave up an easy two points. So I got pulled out of the game. Coach Smith sent me on a bench

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (02:56):
Rest

Scott Williams (02:57):
Of the half. But I appreciate you guys giving me this opportunity to come on and share a little bit.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (03:04):
It’s an honor. If you were running to get a coffee, okay, I would be a little less forgiving. But when you told us that you actually were on a very important phone call, I can look past it, no problem. But thank you so much for coming on, and I tell you what, always I start off with the most hard hitting questions that you could ever imagine. Something that really gets the old brain a turning. So here’s a big question I have for you. Big question. Where’s your favorite place to go on vacation?

Scott Williams (03:32):
Boy, I tell you that’s a tough one because there’s so many great spots and especially when I was younger, I was in world Travel. I did one of these trips where you go around the world in like 40 days, so you just keep moving and bouncing around. My favorite spot that I’ve ever been was probably in, oh, let’s see, Tahiti. Tahiti, nice. I liked, I liked Bora Bora. I’ve always been, I grew a southern California guy. I’ve been in beach communities going down to Huntington and Newport Balboa and something about that beach and Bora Bora was out of this world. I’d never seen anything like that, but obviously not that easy to get to, right? So my favorite spot that I really enjoy going, I live out here in Scottsdale, Arizona. I like shooting down to Cabo, that rocky coastline at Cabo. I love the convenience of being able to jump on a flight and be on a beach in three hours with a cold one in my hand and just kicking back and listening to some good tunes. Maybe it’s, that’s perfect for me. If you have to say staying here in the country again, SoCal, that’s my spot. I like Laguna Beach. Pebble Beach is great, but I like Laguna hanging out at the montage. That’s a spot for me. So I appreciate the easy softball question,

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (04:54):
Guys. Making

Scott Williams (04:54):
Me feel a little better

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (04:55):
About Travis,

Scott Williams (04:56):
About being so late for the program.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (04:58):
Okay. Okay. Now second, that was your two hardball questions, two hardball questions. Besides for yourself, who’s your favorite athlete and why? This is a good one. That’s a great, that’s actually a great first question.

Scott Williams (05:11):
I’ve had a lot of favorites over the years. When I was younger, I was a huge fan of Muhammad Ali. That was kind of like when boxing was great. I think it was like Ali, sugar Leonard, Roberto Durant, Tommy Hearns, those guys are the guys that I watch. I don’t watch boxing anymore and I don’t watch as much NBA as I used to, but I’m so excited because the son’s made a trade for my favorite player in the NBA, Kevin Durant. And I have seen every one of his home games since he’s been here. I’ve probably seen about five home games in the last five years, and I think it’s been five times since he’s been back in his son’s uniform. And I’m excited about the possibility of the son’s team. He got a bunch of bench bunch guys that remind me of myself, Stacey King, BJ Armstrong Will Perdue, that backed up the superstars of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen. Whether or not they can get the chemistry in time for a deep playoff run is yet to be determined. But I think if anybody can make it work of trying to build chemistry quickly, and that’s what they’re after to do, and especially a guy like Durant, an unselfish superstar in my opinion.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (06:19):
Nice. Good answer. See, that was a great question to start off with. That was actually thank,

Scott Williams (06:23):
Was that worth the weight? Was I worth the

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (06:25):
Weight? I’ve heard a bunch of your interviews and you actually said Kevin Durant recently. I don’t know whose podcast you’re on, but I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t watch the NBA like I used to when you were playing, and I just think it’s lost its luster. The turn of the really, in the late nineties I think is when it started going downhill. Not downhill, but just different.

Scott Williams (06:47):
Well, you said that, you said that earlier. I’m sorry, you said didn’t to cut you off. You said that earlier. And I have to agree with you. I’m one of these old crusty guys. Now there’s all, my era of basketball was the best, but we played a different style that was more appealing to me. I don’t like when these guys crank up 25 threes in the first half. There’s no inside play, very little defense. They don’t work. The ball around the Dan Tony teens of Steve Nari Meyer, Joe Johnson, Sean Marion, that seven seconds or less offense that everyone thought was so fast paced and they were blowing teams out the water and setting all kind of scoring records and leading the league in victory so no one could catch up to what they were doing after playing a slow style style. Now that team, if you put it in today’s NBA would be the last based upon speed of play. Yeah,

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (07:35):
They’d be the slowest team on the court. That’s

Scott Williams (07:37):
How fast the game has gotten in a short period of time in less than 10 years. So I just don’t enjoy it as much. But having said that, I am looking forward to what the Suns can do this year. I’ve been in the valley for 20 years, since I played for the team, I broadcast for the team. So I’m hopeful and excited they can get their first championship this year.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (07:56):
Yeah, I’m more excited for the Celtics. But anyways, let’s not get the weeds there. So here’s the thing, when I also, I heard that you like baseball as well. I love the pitch clock. I way off top normally supposed to find out. Well, he’s a baseball player. He actually, I’m just saying I think the pitch clock is actually going to make scores higher and more interesting for baseball.

Scott Williams (08:16):
I’m excited about that too. One of the reasons, and that was my first love, my mama taught me how to play baseball. She taught me how to catch field throw bat. So that was my first level. I was really good till about 12, 13 years old. And the pace of play got so slow for me, I’d be daydreaming at first base, hear the crack of the bat on the ball and not know where the ball was and went, okay, this is not for me. I’ve outgrown. I was playing more basketball at that time. I played with my brother who was three years older than me and his friends. I enjoyed the up and back and forth offense, defense, never resting, always something to be doing. When baseball, you’re in the dugout for long stretches. You’re in between pitches takes forever, all the foul balls, it got too slow. So yeah, this pitch clock, I hope it speeds things up. I haven’t been to a DBAs game for a while, so I’m excited to go down and check it out.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (09:08):
Yeah, absolutely.

Voice over (male) (09:10):
The conversation continues in moments.

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Voice over (male) (09:53):
And now the conversation continues with Travis and Tim.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (09:57):
Tim’s really, he has all these notes. I’ve got so many questions. Are you done with your hard hitters?

Scott Williams (10:03):
Alright, fire Matt. I’m ready.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (10:04):
Yeah, yeah, now we’re ready. We’re ready to get into it. Well, I wanted to jump into the book sooner than sooner than later. I could talk basketball with you all day long, but I’ve got some kind of easier questions at the end. But I want to talk about your book through the Fire, and it was the title that got me, which was a memoir of Trauma and Loss, basketball and Triumph. How did you come up with that title? Where did that come from?

Scott Williams (10:28):
It was something that I kind of just felt, it just kind of clicked with me because when I grew up, I grew up in a very abusive situation, A lot of physical and verbal abuse from my father. And sometimes the physical abuse, obviously that leaves bumps and bruises. It’s the verbal abuse that affects the mind and the brain and having to try to keep your brain from believing almost a psychological warfare damage that was being heaped upon my brother, especially me and my mother. And I just felt like that was a storm, like a firestorm that we had to survive. And I often asked my mom, who was a beautiful woman, strong, not a meek woman at all, came from a family of educators. So she was intelligent why she would stay in such a bad situation. And she said she stayed because she wanted to make sure that we were safe and we were in good area where we get a good education and get us out of the house safely.

(11:43):
And unfortunately, I went to school at University of North Carolina, which was 3000 miles away from home. So when my mother left, I wasn’t there on a day-to-Day basis to watch the way my father was spiraling downhill quickly. And it was the start of my sophomore year. The first day was going to be the first day of practice later that afternoon where Coach Smith knocked on my dormitory door and delivered the news that after my mother had left, my father had found her an apartment waiting for her to come home from work and shot her while she was still in her vehicle four times and then turned the gun on himself. And that was a storm that nobody at any age, especially a young 19 as I was, should ever have to go through. So the title just kind of clicked for me that, yeah, it was a horrible situation.

(12:38):
But thanks to the love of Coach Smith, the culture he had established at North Carolina over his 37 years of coaching there, they wap a warm blanket around me and helped me get through a very difficult time because it was a time where I wanted to set the season out and go back to California and Christmas said no, he wanted me close to him so he’d keep an eye on me so he’d have his people in place that could support me. Everybody from my teammates to the people that worked in the front and the basketball office. I think they sent some days when I was doing really down and say, Hey, let’s go grab a burger. Let’s go grab a beer. Why don’t you come over and cook a pot of spaghetti up? And that was something that I really needed at that point in time.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (13:24):
Did you know that Coach Smith, I mean you talk about it a little bit, but did you know that he was the right guy when you met him in your, he came to your house, right? You told the story about him being smart and bringing your mom right on the recruiting trip. He wasn’t selling you, he was selling your mom. He was

Scott Williams (13:42):
Crafty. That one. Yeah, that’s for sure. I was highly recruited out of high school. I was McDonald’s all American, one of the top five players in the country. And I had a lot of coaches come through that wanted me do official visits on their school. And I decided I was going to narrow the list down as quickly as I possibly could about five schools. Actually, it was about 10 schools for in-home visits, five that I actually took official visits to. But Coach Smith was crafted because all those coaches that came through in their assistants, he was the only one that invited my mother to come with me on my recruiting trip. And she jumped at that opportunity. He was towards the end, nobody else had ever said that. And a part of her, I think her strategy was checking it out to see if that would be a place where in southern California, you go into the south in the eighties, if I would be comfortable there and that it would be safe for me there.

(14:37):
And she felt that Coach Smith had more, I guess, invested into players than he did in winning basketball games. He probably promised me two things. He said, quality education, you’ll leave a better when you leave school. And no other coaches had even said that. So we arrived on a Friday afternoon flying cross country, and by Sunday afternoon my mom was elbowing me and the rib saying, tell coach if you’re coming to school here. So she fell in love with it straight off. So I, but I still wanted to go check out UCLA because that was my lifelong dream to be at Bruin. Yep.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (15:18):
Right. Coach at the right time. Right. I mean it was almost like destiny that your mom connected with him, the campus. And so

Scott Williams (15:28):
Yeah, not to cut you off, Tim, but I think my mom knew that I would be safer further away from home. UCLA is 45 minutes down the road by car. I think that she knew more of what my father was capable of than I think even me and my brother had realized at the time.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (15:45):
And also mom’s know best just in general. I might’ve played some junior college football, but I had options to go to bigger colleges. My mom talked me out of it. She knew that I was not cut out for college, I was going to hate college. So I played a semester, I played a season and only went to school for a semester and a half. I was like, yeah, I’m out. And she saved me a lot of money and a lot of hardship by going to a junior college. But anyway, and that’s great. I tell people with my injuries, I don’t dwell in the past. I reminisce what I had. And it seems like you can look at all the good times that you had with your mom instead of the tragic incident that happened in your life. And probably there’s probably good memories with your dad as well, just to come overcome that at 19 and have people around you is huge. But what was it that finally, maybe when you were like, okay, I’m going to go to the NBA, I’m going to go ahead and get my head on straight. It couldn’t have been easy to go between what was going on there.

Scott Williams (16:44):
No, it really wasn’t Travis. I was very fortunate that you mentioned kind of right place maybe at the wrong time. I don’t know if the right time because nobody wants to go through that. But at the wrong time, I found myself at the right place and Coach Smith did a really good job of, I guess talking with me from a point of not being a coach, but also being a son. There was many times, and I write about this in the book through the fire, that I would just go sit in his office and share with him. I guess there was days where I didn’t want to be out in public. It was fine when I was on the court and I was playing, but I didn’t want to be out in public to have to run into somebody to have a conversation about what happened or to overhear somebody talking from another table about me about what had happened.

(17:43):
Because I did not want, I guess what I was afraid of was that old saying, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, meaning that you kind of are kind of who your parents are in some way. I didn’t want anybody to think that I had that evil in me that my father possessed to take my mother’s life like that. I didn’t want anybody to think that I’d be suicidal either. And talking with Coach Smith, he shared what here, Olympic gold medal winning coach, great players that he coached that were not only in the NBA but thriving in the NBA winning championships or Michael Jordan was on the cusp of becoming the greatest player of all time at that point, certainly the most popular. And he talked to me about his concerns and fears that he had growing up and still have, trying to live up to his father’s expectation, who was a preacher, a coach, and not wanting to disappoint him or lived up to what he thought his father had expected out of him.

(18:49):
And that helped me realize even as somebody as successful as Coach Smith has same sort of feelings or stress stresses that I was going through, and if he could do it, then I could do it too. And that’s kind of why I am writing this book. If I could continue for one more moment, my thoughts still in my head. Everyone says, well, you’ve waited three decades to write this book, why now? And I go, it’s been very hard for me to talk about. I’ve been very, abuse is a shameful situation. We hid so much of it growing up from my friends, from my teachers, from my other coaches. And you kind of fall into that as you get older, especially after something like this happens. It’s hard to talk about, shameful to talk about. But during the pandemic, when we were all joined for basketball, I started finding myself talking to some of my teammates about the stories we were having and wanting to write on Facebook about some of the times we had on road trips or whatever.

(19:49):
And then people said, well, why don’t you write a biography? And I don’t know anything about doing that, and I certainly didn’t want to have to share everything that happened in my childhood because I noticed you got to do an autobiography, but my mama didn’t raise no sissies. And one of the things Coach Smith always had on his practice plan was an offensive emphasis of the day, which might be make the extra pass on offense, defensive emphasis might be sprint back on defense and then build out to your man. But the most important thing on that practice plan was the thought for the day. And it had nothing to do with basketball at all. And one that would come up either once or twice a year or over my four years that came up a lot was it’s never too late to do the right thing. And here I am, like I said, 30 plus years later, finally writing this book at the hopes that I might reach, it might fall into some young man or some young woman’s hands or teenager that might connect my story to some of the things that they’re going through. And if they see that I could not get my education, not give up on my dream of playing in the NBA, that they can still accomplish their dreams and their goals as well.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (20:56):
Awesome. Awesome. I say this all the time, Trav, I admire people who are willing to speak out about their struggle and be as public as you are and being the person that you are, I can guarantee you it’s going to help. And obviously people are buying the book, right? People are going out and getting it and it’s working. Yeah, I think there’s also the point of once you spoke out about what was going on and once people realized your hardships in the past, not only what was so public with the shootings, but also just the abuse growing up and the childhood, you had a lot more people are willing to open up to you and look for you to give them guidance, which I believe you’re a mentor and role model to a lot of people as well. I mean, and that’s has power in itself, right?

Scott Williams (21:44):
Yeah. Travis, thank you for that question because if I can’t share a little bit without giving out any names, I’ve had so many people that I don’t know, I don’t know. The first thing about writing a book, I couldn’t spell author without putting it in my Google search the first time. What the heck? I enjoyed John Grisham and Dan Brown and Tolkien, I read, but I don’t know the first thing about publishing, writing a book, nothing. This is not something I’m good at. I’m sure if you read the book, you’d see it find spelling errors and mistakes all throughout the book. And I didn’t write to be for perfection, and I helped the guy for a bid guest helped me with it too. And we were looking for progress. And the progress that has been the best thing for me has been rewarding, is people that I had no idea, friends of friends and friends of social media that have sent me direct messages or even posted things straight to my page about how they connected with the book for some of the trauma that they’ve gone through when they were a guy telling me from the third grade to sixth grade was abused sexually and had never told anybody that before in his entire life.

(22:53):
But he felt like a connection to this book. He said it was a little traumatic and he had to put it down for a couple hours and picked it back up. He wanted to read the rest of the story and so many people. And that made me think that maybe I am showing people that if you go get some, if you get the strength and the confidence to open up to somebody else, then it helps with the healing process. It really does. And there was times when I was writing this book where I had to stop writing three, four months at a time. It was too much for me to handle. I’d break down just reading what we had talked about and put it on paper and go, I can’t share this. I get real and I get wrong. I talk about wedding the bed.

(23:35):
I wet the bed until I was a senior in high school and here I am, my feet too small for my little twin bed hanging out at the end of the bed. And I went to sleep with a lot of fear most nights, and I couldn’t understand why you couldn’t do it. As soon as I went off to college, never had an issue. And it takes a while to put two and two together, why that would be. But being out of that house, it helped. And that’s been the rewarding thing that having so many people come up to me, especially women that were in situations, they said, I was your mom. I was lucky to get away with my life. And it means something to me that people will share that kind of personal information with them and that they connect with the book, I guess is kind of what I’m trying to get at.

(24:29):
One of every three women at some point in time in their life will be affected by domestic violence directly or indirectly. One out of every seven men, same scenario and 20 people every minute in the United States, this is a stat of obl me weight, 20 people every minute in the United States are affected in some way directly or indirectly by domestic violence. So hoping to write this book partnered with two domestic violence center are one here in Phoenix called the called Chrysalis and another one in Chapel Hill to honor Coach Smith called the Compass Center. So I said, I don’t know if this book’s going to sell 500 copies or 2,500 copies, but I’m hoping to be able to give some of the money from the proceeds back to those two organizations as well as hoping to bring some awareness to a very serious problem that we have.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (25:17):
Well, I got one. I only have one problem with the book. It’s that it’s not on audible. Yeah,

Scott Williams (25:26):
I’ve heard that a few times.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (25:27):
I get a lot of windshield time. All right,

Scott Williams (25:29):
Listen, it is reader friendly. They can’t see me right now, but I got these big readers out right now just so I can see the screen with you guys. So one thing I told my guy, I was like, listen, it’s got to be read, friend. One of the things I hate about reading books is small print too close together and I lose my place and I get major headaches. I’m reading more than 45 minutes or an hour at a time. So I said, make the print, make the font larger and space it out so it’s easy on the eyes and the brain. You don’t get headaches from it. And most people, I tell ’em, they read it straight through. Now listen, it’s only 150 pages, so we’re not talking

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (26:10):
About doing Yeah,

Scott Williams (26:12):
It’s not war piece. It’s not 700 page book.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (26:16):
I get it, I get it.

Scott Williams (26:20):
It’s a reader friendly read one and two. If you have had somebody tell me that had some eye issues that I can’t speak on, but I said, well have somebody read to you because they can do that. It can do that in 75 minutes. I read slow and I can do it in two hours.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (26:36):
Just let me know if you need somebody to read it and I’ll be happy to do it for you. But I’m going to have to read it to Travis because I’m not sure he knows to read. I can’t flip pages in my no hands. Oh, is that what it’s, it’s Oh, okay. But I tell you what,

Scott Williams (26:49):
It’s on Kindle. It’s on Kindle. If you

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (26:51):
Can slide here,

Scott Williams (26:54):
I got it on. So just so we have fans know it’s on Amazon, you get it on Kindle paperback or hard covers also, I found out yesterday, which I didn’t even know [email protected] as well.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (27:05):
Okay, alright.

Scott Williams (27:06):
Yeah, they don’t got ’em stock. They’re made to order. So it might take two, three days

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (27:12):
To get to. No, that’s awesome that you were able to do that. So look, okay, so in your bio it’s like played with Michael Jordan, played with LeBron in the beginning, did all this stuff, three championships, and that’s all important stuff, honestly. Hey, that’s great. And I know you get asked that stuff all the time, so hopefully we’re not deviating from what you’re used to talking about, but I think you as a person is way more involved than just the things like playing with Michael Jordan and LeBron. You’re your own person that’s went through a lot. And I would want to know maybe what’s one or two life lessons that you’ve learned that you live by every day that you try to impart in everybody that you come across that ask for advice?

Scott Williams (27:52):
One of the things that I have picked up on, and I don’t know if it’s from playing with some of the greats of the game, I was very fortunate in a way when I wasn’t drafted that I got an opportunity to try out with a veteran ball club and the Chicago Bulls and I got a chance to play more importantly with professionals and guys like Jordan, but also John Paxon, bill Cartwright, Craig Hodges. They taught me what it was to be a professional, a BP. They always talked about this, always be a professional and I try to live my life that way, but also realizing that we’re not here for a long time, right? We’re here for a good time and you can be a professional and still have fun by not taking yourself too damn seriously. And that’s kind of how I’ve always lived my life.

(28:50):
So people always go, you’re incredibly good with people that come up and want to talk sports or want to take a picture or whatever. I go, why wouldn’t I be? I’m appreciative that they think that I meant something or the bulls meant something during a time period in their life growing up that was special to them. And that means a lot to me. Like I said, I never was an all-star team or first team all NBA or even going to be a Hall of Famer, but I was on a special team at a special time in the NBA. And there’s not a day that goes by seriously that somebody doesn’t come up to me and go, Hey champ, how’s it going? Can I get a photo? Can I get an autograph? Or wanting to tell me a story about where they were when we won

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (29:38):
The

Scott Williams (29:38):
Third championship, when John Pax and hit the shout against the Phoenix, how much that meant to them to spend that time with their dad. And they think about now he’s passed and what a special time in that moment was for the two of them or whatever the case might be. And that’s a pretty damn cool thing.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (29:57):
You played with both. I think you’re one of only four players that played with both LeBron and Michael. Is that right?

Scott Williams (30:03):
Tim? You do your homework. That’s correct.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (30:05):
I’ll do a little homework. I had a little help. Mike helped me out. But I want to know something is going to be, you want to talk about hard hitting? Who’s better? Jordan or LeBron,

Scott Williams (30:16):
I should say buy the book because I write about it in the book, but I guess I’ll give that away since I was late for the show today. They’re both special. I hate when guys make it come across, one is not as good as the other because they say, well, he’s the goat, right? So for me it’s one in one A. They have both accomplished so much. They’ve both been a great ambassadors for the NBA and the game of basketball and in their communities, my opinion Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball of all time because he had this special something and I played with Steve Nash, Dirk Ky, Allen Iversson, obviously the LeBron James, they name some of the greats of the Hall of Famers. MJ had this one little gear that these other guys didn’t have. And I don’t think about a competitiveness, I just talk about a will to win and overcome in any situation whatsoever. I never went into a playoff series with any team thinking there was any chance that we were going to lose. Which is weird, right? Because funny things happen in sports, but not when that guy’s on your side, not when the chips run the line. You might lose some games regularly say we’re going to go undefeated. You might lose some games in a playoff series. But when it came to advancing and going to the next round or winning a championship, that dude just had something that nobody

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (31:50):
Better

Scott Williams (31:50):
I hadn’t seen in these other cats that allowed him to be able to meet that moment and not only just get the job done, they all got the job done. I always got Magic Johnson, Larry Birds, they all got the job done. LeBron James, they got the job done, but they did it in a way that surpassed everyone’s expectations of them doing it. And that was the thing that for me just made Michael Jordan just a couple ticks better than the rest of those NBA. Great.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (32:17):
Well, and you got to have the extra peanut butter sandwiches like you said, which whenever you, yeah, it’s

Scott Williams (32:23):
Not like it’s big when you win those championships. I’d rather,

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (32:26):
Yeah. Well this, you’re truly a joy. I’m so glad that you took time out of your busy schedule to hang out with us finally, after not wanting to hang out with us. And Mike’s like, Hey look, come on. You got to come on. Help us out. But hey, I really appreciate you sharing and opening up and I hope we focus on the right things for you. I want to tell your story and your message, so I probably should maybe went harder in the NBA and the things that you did, but at the same time I’m like, I’m just proud to know you and I think you’re doing great things. And I think you telling your story and being that guiding light for people is huge. So the more you can get that out there in the world and share good, and help people get through traumatic situations, it’s always a positive great thing. So thanks for coming on the American Hero, show you champion and wish you all the best.

Scott Williams (33:13):
Well, thank you very much guys. It’s been a pleasure chopping it up with you on American Hero Show. And I think anybody that goes out and gets through the fire, I don’t know what we’ll be able to accomplish, but bringing some awareness to domestic violence and the struggles of the victims that come along with that. I’m trying to do my part and you keep doing yours, Travis. Don’t know you a long time, but I’m already a big fan.

Travis Mills and Tim Eisenhart (33:39):
Absolutely. Hey, thank you. I appreciate that. Let Tim know

Voice over (male) (33:43):
This is the American Hero Show.

Travis Mills (33:48):
Hey, what’s up? All your peoples are listening. Travis Mills here and lemme tell you something I want to say, thanks so much for supporting the American Hero Show and the Travis Mills Foundation. We’re constantly making improvements in Maine to help veterans, first responders and their families and can not do it without your generosity. Thanks for donating to the American Hero show.com. And I’ll tell you what, in addition to my work with the foundation speaking engagements, coast to coast of putting up with Tim on the show, and you guys know what I mean by that, I made time to put pen to paper and share some of my strategies for healing and moving forward in my new book, bounce Back, 12 Warrior Principles to Reclaim and Recalibrate Your Life. Get your copies [email protected]. Thanks for the support and have a wonderful day.

Voice over (male) (34:28):
Four more on how you can help our country’s heroes. Go to American Hero show.com.