Life After Clippers Couldn’t Be Better for Williams

The Life of Brian (cont.):

Back by the Great Salt Lake, which he has cheerfully derided in the past as “pungent,” prompting locals to bring banners damning his name, Brian Williams continues his audition for fame and fortune, now drawing ever closer.

Actually, Williams, a free agent in last summer’s shopping binge after posting career-high averages of 16 points and 7.5 rebounds as a Clipper and cracking the top-10 centers list, should already be rich, rather than working for $27,500 and all the publicity he can generate.

Let’s just say some careers are more . . . unconventional . . . than others, their paths a little twistier.

Like “The Life of Brian,” a Monty Python movie about an ordinary man mistaken for the Messiah, the life of Brian Williams is about a young man mistaken for a mere basketball player.

Williams, 28, does so much more than play basketball. He reads Nietzsche, runs before the bulls in Pamplona, bicycles across the Utah desert, sneers at one-horse towns, sky-dives.

Oops, and hurts his knee his free-agent summer.

Things were already problematic. The Lakers, his first choice, put him on hold while pursuing their first choice, Shaquille O’Neal. Meanwhile, Seattle offered $5 million a year, which Williams rejected.

When the smoke cleared, O’Neal was in Los Angeles, Jim McIlvaine had Seattle’s $5 million and Williams was playing left out.

Then the Clippers got word Williams was unhappy with their medical care--he says he hurt his knee against the Bulls last March 30--and passed on word that he had just taken up sky-diving.

Williams says he jumped once and no evidence suggests it aggravated his condition, but how would it have looked in court when Perry Mason pulled out the picture of Brian floating through the sky?

No action was brought and Williams underwent surgery, without announcement. Then he sat at home in Santa Monica, rehabilitated in secret and waited while other big guys signed big deals and the months rolled by.

He says it wasn’t a bit dismaying:

“Not at all. Actually, I had a very contemplative and relaxing time. I worked out. I stepped away and it wasn’t so bad. It was refreshing. I came back recharged and refocused.”

As part of the contemplative process, he fired his agent, the truculent Fred Slaughter, and hired the more accessible, if less experienced, Dwight Manley.

Manley had a one-man--one-being?--stable, Dennis Rodman. Finding interest, Manley took Williams on a tour that was about to net the long-sought contract in Dallas . . . until the medical exam red-flagged Brian’s knee. The Mavericks, ripped in the local papers for trading Jason Kidd, were in no mood to introduce a $6-million, one-legged center.

After an arthroscopic knee clean-up, and more months off for Williams, Manley hatched Plan B--an audition with the Bulls, giving the defending champions insurance at a key position, Williams a chance to show he was OK, and, hopefully, putting him in the greatest showcase of all, the NBA finals.

After all the wrong turns, that’s what happened.

Williams reported, looking like a basketball-playing Buddha, although he insists he was only eight pounds overweight. By the Eastern Conference finals, slimmed down, no longer confused by the triangle offense, things started happening.

“He’s an athlete,” Miami Coach Pat Riley said. “He’s much more athletic than [starter Luc] Longley. . . . Most of the time their centers are not a force offensively, but he gives them another real scorer out there.”

If only briefly. Because of cap rules, Williams must settle for a 20% raise over the minimum full-season salary, $247,500, or leave again and finally reap his eight-figure, seven-year reward, which he is resigned to doing.

Nothing else about the last year, however, saddens him.

“It takes a lot to play for the Clippers,” he says. “And the fact they’re offering less than other teams certainly doesn’t endear you to them. They just think that just because you live in sunny California, you’re going to accept less money to put up with everything that being a Clipper is all about. They’re sadly mistaken.

“But they’re not really interested in signing their free agents. The owner doesn’t want to pay the money. That’s just their history. They let all their free agents go. . . . They’d rather have a scrappy team that overachieves from time to time. They’re not interested in going anywhere.”

The Clippers note that they offered Williams $4 million a year for months when no one else was offering anything.

Williams says Seattle’s $5 million set the market price.

“If I turn that . . . down, why do you think I’m going to accept less from [the Clippers]?” he says.

Actually, Williams wasn’t eager to return and when the Clippers sensed that, they quickly wrote him off.

The Antonio McDyess trade for Williams, Rodney Rogers and Brent Barry was first portrayed as a Bill Fitch initiative--after the organization trotted out Fitch for spin control--but it was Elgin Baylor’s idea. But after a 29-victory season, Baylor was out of support. When the Clippers got word of the surgery, they whisked the offer off the table.

So Williams wasted a season, financially, but had another cool adventure.

Oh yes, and Williams just might get a ring out of it.

“I still refer to this team as ‘they’ a lot,” he says. “I’m respectful that they did a lot before I got here.”

You could say that. They won 62 of their 69 games without him, but he has helped them in the playoffs and they have helped him. Assuming the Clippers find a center, everybody just might live happily ever after.