He’s Far Away From a Corner : After Running Drugs as a Child, Williams Has Grown as a Titan

It was easy money for a 13-year-old.

Sean Williams said he would hang around street corners near the East Baltimore projects he called home. The local drug dealers would swing by and give him drugs or cash. All Williams had to do was hold the goods for a while.

It’s a common practice in the inner-city drug trade. Few cops suspect kids of dealing, so the dealers have the youngsters hold their money or merchandise until the heat is off. The kids are known as “runners.”

When the dealers returned to pick up their wares, Williams said they’d give him a few bucks or a new pair of sneakers. In a good week, he could make $300. For doing practically nothing.

“As a 13-year old, $100 is the world to you,” said Williams, now the starting center for Cal State Fullerton’s basketball team. “I thought it was a quick way to get a pair of Air Jordans. It sure beat having a paper route.”

For three years--even as his mother was training to become a police officer--Williams said he worked the streets for fast money and managed to stay one step ahead of the law.

Then he showed up late for basketball practice one day during his junior year at Merganthaler Vocational Technical School in Baltimore and got an earful from his coach, John Blake, who had a good idea why Williams wasn’t on time.

“He told me, ‘Sean, by the time you’re 18 you could be 7 feet tall, and you might make a million dollars playing basketball some day--why mess your life up?’ ” Williams said. “Compared to the $200 or $300 a week I was making, I figured I’d go for the million and leave those knuckleheads alone.”

So ended Williams’ illegal entrepreneurial career and began a long-and-winding basketball career that has veered into four states and colleges in four years, the present stop being at Cal State Fullerton, where Williams is a junior majoring in . . .

Criminal justice.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Williams said.

Williams, 21, has made tremendous strides this year at Fullerton. Early in the season he was a gangly, 6-foot-9, 216-pounder who could barely catch the ball, let alone shoot it.

He started the first two games but then was sent to the bench because opposing centers were pushing him around inside defensively. And offensively, Williams wasn’t much help either.

Williams is a quick leaper who immediately gained notoriety among Titan fans for his authoritative, two-handed dunks, but that was about the only shot he could make and the only shot teammates trusted him with.

He also had an awkward-looking, right-handed jump hook that, during the first few games of the season usually sailed over the rim and rarely through it. Williams always posted up on offense, but the Titans rarely delivered the ball.

But gradually, Williams began to adjust to the new system. He became more assertive on defense and grew more accustomed to his role on offense.

He had six rebounds and three blocked shots against UCLA and seven points and six rebounds against Drake in late December. By Dec. 30, he had earned his starting job back. That night, he had 15 rebounds and three blocked shots in a loss to a very good Houston team.

Williams reached double figures for the first time this season against Fresno State (12 points) Jan. 9 and has scored 10 points or more in 11 of 14 games since, with a season-high 20 against UC Irvine Feb. 15.

The Titans, who play Cal State Long Beach at 9 p.m. Friday in the first round of the Big West Conference tournament, have been passing the ball inside to Williams, and Williams has responded.

He averaged 12.2 points and 6.1 rebounds during conference play and ranks second in the Big West in blocked shots with a 1.6 average. He had 13 points and 12 rebounds against Nevada Las Vegas and its highly regarded 7-foot center, Elmore Spencer. He had 19 points, eight rebounds and four blocked shots in an overtime victory over Long Beach.

When he doesn’t score from inside, Williams often draws a foul, and he has made 67 of 88 free throws for 76.1%, seventh-best in the conference. His confidence has soared, and so has his teammates’ confidence in him.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement. Williams tends to get in foul trouble and has fouled out of four games. He’ll try to block an opponent’s shot instead of taking a charge. And though he’s been scoring with his jump hook, he’s still limited offensively.

But he’s progressing.

“What’s happened is the guys know where he can score now, and they’re getting balls to him in the right spots,” said Titan assistant Dan Dion, who recruited Williams from community college. “It took time to see where his strengths are.

“The more he plays, the more experience he gains. If he works hard this off-season, really gets after it this summer, with another year of college under his belt, his future is ahead of him. He’s just starting to scratch his potential.”

As a person, too.

With his gold front tooth--”Everyone in East Baltimore has one,” Williams said--and that seemingly ever-present scowl on his face during games, Williams strikes a lean-and-mean pose at Fullerton.

But you should have seen him in high school.

“I was rowdy back then,” Williams said. “People who knew me would have said they hated me because I was the most arrogant person in the world. I had to have things my way. I was very confrontational.”

That personality served him well on the basketball court, where Williams was a two-year varsity starter. Aggression helped make up for his 6-8, 175-pound frame and, as a senior, he averaged 20 points and 12 rebounds and led the state in blocked shots.

After graduating in 1988, he earned a scholarship to Morgan State, a Division I school in Baltimore, but was ineligible his freshman year under Proposition 48.

Williams attended Morgan State but didn’t play, and his behavioral patterns and an abundance of free time were not a good mix.

“Once I got to Morgan, I wanted to be with girls and hang out on corners,” Williams said. “My game went downhill.”

When the coach who recruited him, Nat Frazier, was fired at Morgan State, Williams decided to transfer. A summer-league coach suggested Navarro Junior College in Corsicana, Tex., and off Williams went.

It wasn’t until Williams left East Baltimore for Texas that he became enlightened.

“Growing up in the projects, the only role models I had were basketball players or drug dealers,” Williams said. “But when I moved, I learned black people can be more than basketball players or drug dealers.

“I met black professors, and it made me realize that what my mom was telling me--to stay in school and out of trouble--was right. It gave me inspiration to see that these people can make it, that they could go to sleep at night without worrying about someone breaking into their house, that they could have families. It made me want to set goals for myself.”

Still, change was not an overnight process. Williams averaged six points and four rebounds as a reserve center during his freshman year at Navarro, but he reverted to East Baltimore Sean the next fall.

A teammate got into a fight during a Navarro football game, and Williams jumped in to help. The school president witnessed the altercation and suspended Williams for a semester.

Having already used his redshirt year, Williams decided it was best to transfer, so he headed to Connors State Junior College in Warner, Okla. But the problems at Navarro served as a wake-up call for Williams.

“At Texas, I learned I had to start taking responsibility for my actions,” Williams said. “Before, I always knew if I wasn’t 18, I wasn’t going to go to jail for anything I did. Then, I started realizing I’m too skinny to go to jail, so I had to start changing my ways.”

Those changes began at Connors, where Williams averaged 12 points and eight rebounds and was second-team all-conference last season. Those changes have continued at Fullerton, a school Williams chose over Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Houston.

Dion had recruited Titan point guard Aaron Sunderland from Connors the previous year and had a connection with the school’s coaching staff. Having an aunt in Hollywood and the prospect of standing out in a smaller program pointed Williams toward the west.

Dion said there have been no signs of the surly Sean who roamed the streets of East Baltimore.

“He’s never been in a fight, either here or at Connors, and he’s never had a harsh word for anyone,” Dion said. “There have never been any rough edges with him. He’s a nice kid.”

While Williams may not graduate with honors, he is on course toward a degree at Fullerton. He had a 2.1 grade-point average his first semester, and if he continues to do well this semester and next year, he said he’ll need only one extra semester to graduate.

“He’s very mature in knowing what he wants,” Dion said. “He takes care of business, gets the right courses, goes to counselors. Sometimes JC guys have a hard time doing that, but he’s been very mature here.”

His game is starting to mature, too, though there are times he looks like a toddler taking his first steps. Williams has been lifting weights and getting stronger. His hand-eye coordination is improving. And he has been learning some new offensive moves from Titan forward Agee Ward to add to his patented but not-very-pretty jump hook.

It may not be the Great American Success Story--at least, not yet--but Williams has come a long way from East Baltimore, and all it takes is a trip back home to realize the strides he has made.

“Every time I go home, the drug dealers will say, ‘Sean, get off the corner, because you have a chance to make it and we don’t,’ ” Williams said. “When I was growing up I’d see guys from Baltimore like (NBA players) Reggie Williams, David Wingate or Reggie Lewis come back from college, and everything they said was like gold. People look up to me like that now.”

Williams also tries to reach out to those kids on the corner who might be doing the same things Williams did eight years ago.

“I tell the kids to leave the corners alone, play basketball and listen to your mother,” Williams said.