Former Nets All-Star Jayson Williams killed his limo driver with an accidental shotgun blast in 2002, and he continues to feel the lonely, alcoholic aftershocks and is “always haunted by that night.”
“Any time you accidentally take a life of somebody, definitely, sleep deprivation, everything comes. Take something from a man, everything he has and everything he would have, is terrible, and I’m not the victim here,” Williams said on a recent Vice Sports podcast. “It’s just something you can’t get over, and forgiving myself is something you think you can do. It’s much easier said than done, and I go into places where I can’t sleep. Then I started drinking and I get grouchy and angry and I get heavy and I hide and I’m no good to anybody.”
Williams said he was in the midst of a downward spiral several months ago, “drinking moonshine and losing [his] mind” at a secluded cabin, when Chris Mullin — a fellow New York City native and St. John’s alum — arrived to help pull him out. Williams suggested he may work in some capacity at St. John’s, where Mullin is now the basketball coach.
“I’ll just get into a pattern where I’m self-pity and just a mess to be around and just go hide in a cabin in the woods on 300 acres and nobody will see me for two, three weeks and just be that selfish,” Williams said. “I don’t know what to do about it but just try and be a better human being every day and help others. That’s why I wanted to be a part of St. John’s University so bad. I needed that.”
Williams pleaded guilty in 2010 to aggravated assault in connection with the death of Costas Christofi, his chauffeur. Before being sentenced, Williams tearfully apologized to the victim’s family: “There’s not a day I wake up and I don’t feel sorry for what I did to Mr. Christofi and that I put you through this.”
After getting out of prison in 2012, Williams still struggled to find solace and turned to alcohol. Now 48, Williams is getting treatment for alcohol issues in Delray Beach, Fla., but admitted he is “one drink away from losing everything.”
Williams also hit some lighter notes in the hour-long interview, discussing his interactions with some of the basketball giants he crossed paths with in the 1990s.
On Charles Barkley: Williams said Barkley would come to 76ers practices with breakfast from McDonald’s and sit on the stationary bike eating while others ran drills. “The worst person to play with,” Williams said, “…because you went in, you got all the bad habits from him.”
On Larry Bird: Williams said the aging Celtics legend taunted him mercilessly during one game from Williams’ rookie season. After drilling a pump-fake 3, Bird rose up for a dunk. “Oh s–t, I got dunked on by a white man who’s at the end of his career,” Williams said. “It’s a wrap now.”
On Manute Bol: Williams said the 7-foot-7 center, a Philadelphia teammate in the early 1990s, patrolled the locker room in the nude and constantly swilled Heineken in an effort to gain weight. Bol “never played sober in one basketball game,” according to Williams, who also claimed he figured out the Sudanese native — who died in 2010 at the listed age of 47 — was 55 years old in 1990 by counting marks Bol made on his head every five years.