JOHN WILLIAMS . . . : AFTER THE SCANDAL : He’s Finally Putting Pieces Back Together : Rookie Wants to Work Hard, Be Family Man, Trust No One

The man, carrying a bag of Halloween candy, approached the patio table where John Williams and his 3-year-old son, John Jr., were sitting in a local Holiday Inn.

Smiling, the man extended the bag of candy to the child, who shook his head and said no. John Williams nodded approvingly.

“I’m teaching my kids that you don’t take nothin’ from nobody,” John Williams said Monday, recounting the incident.

That lesson takes on an added urgency, and poignancy, when you have been accused of being on the take.

John (Hot Rod) Williams has been. On March 26, 1985, he was arrested on sports bribery charges and accused of being part of a point-shaving conspiracy.

Eventually, criminal charges were brought against eight people. Tulane University suspended its basketball program. And John Williams, who had envisioned a future in the NBA, instead was facing jail in Louisiana.

It took 15 months and one mistrial, but Williams was retried last June and acquitted of all charges. And the NBA, which had refused to let him play last season, after he had been drafted in the second round by the Cleveland Cavaliers, was satisfied by the verdict and restored his eligibility.

“I knew it was going to come,” said Williams, who played two summers of minor league basketball while his life was in limbo. “It was just going to take time.”

It has taken no time at all for the 6-foot 11-inch, 230-pound power forward to establish himself as one of the league’s most talented rookies on a team full of first-year players. The Cavaliers have five.

Going into tonight’s game against the Lakers, Williams is the Cavaliers’ second-leading scorer with a 16.3-point average, and leads them with 8.5 rebounds a game and 44 blocked shots.

His first time in Madison Square Garden, he scored 26 points and took down 18 rebounds. Against the Boston Celtics, he made two key free throws in the closing seconds of a Cleveland win. Last Saturday night, he blocked six shots in a win over Philadelphia.

“I think Hot Rod can be outstanding in this league,” Cleveland Coach Lenny Wilkens said. “He’s like a complete player. He plays both ends of the floor.

“He rebounds for you, blocks shots, plays without the ball. He can score, he can give it up (pass), and he can run the court.

” . . . Our feeling here is, ‘Let him get on with the rest of his life. That other stuff is over and done with. Let’s move on.’ ”

John Williams and his wife, Neicy, have two children, John Jr. and Johnfrancis. Why the similarity in names?

“I want my boys to have my name,” Williams said. “I want them to know who their father is.

“I know how hard it is to grow up without a father. I couldn’t leave my kids for nothin’.

“I care for my kids. Nothing in the world can make me split from them.”

In Sorrento, a tiny Louisiana town about 50 miles northwest of New Orleans, Williams was born to a mother who died when he was 7 months old. His father apparently did not want him. He disappeared one day, leaving John with his maternal grandfather, Felton Williams, who was 78 years old and blind.

A neighbor, Barbara Colar, took the infant in, and became the only mother he ever knew.

He has only seen his father once or twice since, Colar says. When Michael Green, Williams’ attorney in the Tulane case, asked about his father, he said Williams began to cry.

“I looked up again about half an hour later, and he was still sitting there, crying,” Green said in an interview.

But if his father had no interest in him, there were other men who did. College basketball recruiters, who flocked to see Williams, 6-10 as a senior, lead St. Amant High School to a 29-4 record and to the quarterfinals of the state tournament.

The flashy nickname, Hot Rod, suggested street smarts and high style. Williams had neither. He was rural poor and barely educated. The nickname was given him early by Colar, because of the car-like noises he would make while scooting backward on the floor.

“A backwater kid,” said Harry Weltman, the Cavalier general manager who drafted Williams and later was fired.

“Not a bright kid or a sophisticated kid. I felt he had a great chance to play basketball and live a good life or not play basketball and have a very, very difficult one.”

Williams was still in high school when he learned first-hand how basketball could affect his standard of living. Coaches began to stop by his house, attorney Green said, leaving money. A representative of Tulane, the attorney said, left Williams a shoe box containing $10,000.

That “gift” settled the question of where Williams would go, even though he graduated 181st in a class of 282 and had a combined score of 490 on the college Scholastic Aptitude Tests.

The test scores didn’t matter, attorney Green said. Williams took the exams in the afternoon. Tulane had accepted him that morning.

“That’s an old story,” Williams said, when asked about the shoe box. “Any school would have helped me out. If you in my situation, and didn’t have nothing . . . I didn’t do nothing I thought was wrong.

” . . . The way I growed up, since I was young I always worked for what I got. I tried to impress people by being nice, but some people, when they know you are nice, they know they can use you.”

As a freshman at Tulane, Williams led the Green Wave in scoring. As a junior, he was named player of the year in the Metro Conference. As a senior, his world fell apart on that March night he was arrested.

Williams was accused of shaving points in games against Memphis State and Southern Mississippi. He was described by the prosecution as a drug user, with cocaine being part of the payoff in the point-shaving scheme.

But holes developed in the case against Williams. Six key prosecution witnesses--including three former teammates--were either granted immunity or pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

And despite a taped statement on the night of his arrest, in which he admitted receiving money but denied shaving points, Williams might have been his own best defense.

In the game against Southern Mississippi, in which Williams supposedly made sure that Tulane would win by fewer than 10 points, he scored 16 points and was 6 for 6 from the floor in the second half. In an 11-point loss to Memphis State, which had been favored by 7, Williams scored 14 points.

The judge declared a mistrial in August, 1985, because the prosecution withheld evidence that might have exonerated Williams. Charges were dismissed against Williams, but the prosecution successfully appealed the ruling, and a second trial was ordered.

All six jurors found Williams not guilty after Green destroyed the credibility of the prosecution witnesses.

“In ways, I was just used,” Williams said. “It’s hard to explain, but when you’re one of the best basketball players in a place, everybody wants a piece of you.

“I thought (the case) was over the first time. I knew they didn’t have a case. They tried to hide all kinds of stuff, with plea-bargaining and immunity. People will do anything to save their lives.

“But I’ve put it all behind me.”

Before the 1985 draft, the NBA circulated an advisory warning teams that Williams would be ineligible pending the resolution of his case. Weltman, Cleveland’s general manager, drafted him anyway, in the second round. Without the case, most observers agree that Williams would have been one of the first 10 players selected.

And how did Cleveland react to Weltman’s choice?

“Are you kidding me? They tore me apart,” he said Monday. “One writer said it was morally reprehensible.

“But I had a number of reasons to pick the kid. One, we had some insight as to how well he could play. Two, we had done some investigatory work and knew there was a strong possibility that he would be acquitted.

“And I wanted to be the one to give the kid a chance. I had a tendency to believe he was an underdog, written off as guilty, but it was guilt by association.

“I never stopped being amazed at how he dealt with the situation. I don’t know how he put up with it. It took tremendous heart, strength and courage.”

Weltman, asked about the reports of drug involvement, said: “I’d heard the stories. But upon speaking to John, he strongly denied them. I can’t swear to the 100% accuracy of our assessment, but I felt it was not a problem.

“And nothing has happened since to make that assessment wrong. . . . I really feel he was a victim.”

For the last two summers, Williams played in the United States Basketball League. Last winter, he sat and watched the Cavaliers lose, since the NBA would not honor his three-year contract. This fall, the Cavaliers added a fourth year, making the contract worth a total of $1.275 million.

“I hoped he’d be reinstated last year,” Weltman said, adding with a laugh, “It might have made a difference in my own situation.”

Wilkens, in his first year as Cavalier coach, inherited a team with five rookies--Williams, Ron Harper, Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, and Johnny Newman. Nine players on his roster have three years’ experience or less.

Of Williams, Wilkens said: “He’s a very serious-minded guy, more serious than the rest.

“I’m sure (the trial) was a sobering experience for him, but I think it’s also part of his personality.”

Williams says there was a time he was more outgoing. “I’m not real friendly, like I used to be,” he said. “When people came up to me, to talk to me, I’d talk with ‘em, but I don’t do that no more.

“Now when they say, ‘How ya doin’,’ I just wave, say thank you, and go about my business. I talk only to my family and my teammates.

“You can’t trust everybody. Some people you think are your friends might be your worst enemy. You never know.

“That’s why I teach my kids, ‘Don’t take nothin’ from nobody.’ ”

There have been hecklers, but only a few, Williams said.

“People have been great here,” he said. “They say, ‘We need you out there. We wish you were out there last year.’ ”

So does Williams. But it is enough that he is playing now, and that he can hope for his children to have what he didn’t.

“I don’t want them to worry where their next meal is coming from,” he said. “I want them to know their father and mother will always be there.

“And mainly, I want them to get an education, more than the one I have.”