Leon Williams winces ever so slightly as he eases his 6-foot-8 frame into a chair that clearly wasn’t built with him in mind. He shifts in his seat, trying to find the best way to stretch out comfortably.
Sore?
“You know it,” Williams says and rubs both of his knees. “There are a lot of miles on these legs.”
The Convo’s practically deserted after men’s basketball practice and one by one his teammates head out. Spying Williams, they crack jokes at the expense of the senior, who responds with a gibe of his own and a deep laugh that echoes across the court.
This isn’t the serious image of Williams that the Ohio Athletic Department often portrays in advertisements and on posters that are splattered across town. No, this is the easy-going, unassuming Williams who tries so hard to discredit the attention he receives.
Consistently throughout his college career, Williams has downplayed every positive comment he’s received and attributed any accolade to the rest of the team.
He never sought the spotlight, but inadvertently found it during a freshman season that surprised the entire Mid-American Conference and after a tip-in that made him the hero of Athens.
Williams may not have seen himself as the guy back then, and he may not have wanted the attention or the responsibility he stumbled into.
But now, in his final season, the signs are everywhere that the 21-year-old has accepted and embraced his role as the face of Ohio basketball.
Marquee Matchup
Williams has seen it all. Double-teams, triple-teams, defenders who drape themselves over him and players who flop backward at the sight of him even if he’s more than a foot away.
“I’m used to everything at this point,” Williams said. “There’s nothing I can do because even if I retaliate in the slightest I know I’m going to get a foul. It’s kind of frustrating to be honest.”
His MAC Freshman of the Year performance in 2004-05 caught the attention of opponents, who have made sure to throw everything they have at Williams since. He gets teams’ best scouting reports, best defensive efforts and best games every game, because if he’s rolling, they’re probably losing.
It’s never just a single player who wants a piece of Ohio’s marquee forward, either, but instead it becomes more of a group project, sometimes with three crashing on top of him to wrestle a rebound away.
“I always joke that I wish Leon was the second biggest guy in the league, or the second best big man,” assistant coach Kevin Kuwik said. “Guys can just bang on him and the refs feel sorry for them because they’re guarding Leon, meanwhile he’s getting the snot kicked out of him.”
Williams won’t react though, because he doesn’t want anyone to know when they’ve gotten under his skin. “I’m pretty durable anyway,” he said. Besides if defenders are busy worrying about Williams, somebody else is wide open.“If that’s how they want us to beat them, that’s fine,” Williams said. “They can triple-team me.”
‘The guy’
It was a week in late July when Kuwik and then assistant coach Brian Townsend were in Florida at an AAU tournament looking for a forward when they spotted Williams.
He didn’t have much of a reputation at the time because he had gone to public school his first two years of high school. And even though he earned accolades after transferring to Cardinal Gibbons, he was overshadowed by two players at rival Baltimore high schools — Rudy Gay, who now plays for the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA and George Mason’s Will Thomas.But Williams was exactly what Ohio was looking for. He was a big kid, Kuwik recalled, “he had these NFL ankles, great hands and he really knew how to get great positioning on people.
“He never really had an explosive game like some guys. He’s always been more workman-like,” Kuwik said. “But when he gets the ball there aren’t many kids who can do what he does.”
The Bobcats and the rest of the MAC found that out fast. Ohio had just come off a 10-20 season and expectations were low — the Bobcats were rebuilding and had been picked to finish last in 2004-2005.
Only hitch was, no one told Williams that. He averaged 11.9 points and 8.6 rebounds that season, only to further imbed himself in Ohio basketball lore by tipping in the game-winner in the MAC Championship game against Buffalo.
“There was nothing like that,” Williams said. “I wish we would have come back that night to celebrate here with everyone. I just want to have another memory like that.”
The Bobcats have been contenders in the MAC East since then, with no one willing to underestimate them or Williams. But Ohio hasn’t been able to duplicate that success either, a reality that the coaching staff challenged Williams with this past off-season.
“What do you want your legacy to be?” they asked him, associate head coach John Rhodes said. Rhodes has served as a surrogate father to Williams during his time at Ohio, and Rhodes knew he still had untapped potential.
“He kind of laid in limbo for a year-and-a-half,” Rhodes said. “With that success he had in his freshman year, all of a sudden there came a certain responsibility and I don’t think he saw himself as ‘the guy.’
“We all did as coaches, but we couldn’t push him into it,” Rhodes said. “He had to want it.”
Big and small, respect from all
The Ohio coaches were clearly frustrated with the pace of practice that day in February. Players were dawdling, talking a lot while shooting free throws and the team’s focus was nowhere to be found.
“C’mon ya’ll lets go,” Williams says just loud enough so that everyone in the gym can hear.
Almost instantly the players stopped talking and returned their attention to constructing a defense for this week’s opponent. By the next drill, each player has upped their intensity so that they aren’t the guy caught behind on a play.
All the coaches admit that oftentimes Williams’ comments register more than their own, but if it keeps the team working together they don’t mind.
“What’s more important than his own acceptance of all this,” Rhodes said, “is that his teammates are accepting of it. Everybody has an ego, but they respect the fact that here’s a guy who draws a lot of attention but who can maintain that and he doesn’t alienate anyone.”
Williams might be able to defer attention away from himself in a news conference or an awards ceremony, but he can’t avoid it all the time.
One day this winter, Rhodes brought Williams along to his son’s basketball practice. The elementary-schoolers flocked to the Bobcats’ forward.
“Hey, Leon,” they yelled. “You’re awesome!”
“I was a little embarrassed,” Williams said. “I’m not one to try to broadcast stuff to the world, but I’m glad they like me that much, you want kids to be happy.
“I guess I am that recognizable if little kids know who I am.”
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