J-Speaks: Raw Emotions from 2019 NBA Draft from Williamson, Morant, and Barrett

While it was no surprise of who the Top 3 selections were in the 2019 NBA Draft this past Thursday night, perhaps what was surprising were the emotions that came from the trio of players, whose emotions from not just themselves but their families that represented all the hard work, sacrifice, commitment and energy it took for their children are in position to achieve a childhood dream and set up themselves and their respective families financially for life. 

With the No. 1 overall pick, the New Orleans Pelicans selected the most hyped collegiate prospect since four-time Kia MVP now of the Los Angeles Lakers LeBron James went No. 1 overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in Zion Williamson out of Duke University. 

The selection of the out of this world talent from Spartanburg, SC, which was basically a lock when the Pelicans won the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery back in May completes a emotional and incredible year where the 6’ 7’’ 285-pound power forward was under the microscope from the minute he stepped onto Duke’s campus. 

Unlike a lot of players who would have wilted or had their ups-and-downs under that consistent attention, Williamson thrived under it and all the hard work that he has put in since he was five years old all came out when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called his name, he stood and hugged his mother Sharonda Anderson for what seemed like about a minute (five seconds according to an article in Friday’s edition of New York’s Newsday. 

Williamson cried when being interviewed by ESPN’s Maria Taylor saying of his mother, who was his basketball coach until age 14 supported his dream of playing basketball from as mentioned a very young age, “I didn’t think I’d be in this position.” 

“My mom sacrificed a lot for me. I wouldn’t be here without my mom. She did everything for me. I just want to thank her.” 

“She put her dreams aside for mine. She always looked out for the family and friends before herself.” 

One of the ways Mrs. Anderson looked out for her son is as mentioned she was his basketball coach until the early part of his teen years. 

During those years, she instilled in Williamson a commitment to working hard on his game and never letting the naysayers get him off course. She also instilled in him the importance of respecting your teammates and understanding that the success of the teams he played on and individual success comes from the connective tissue of being both a good teammate and good person. 

Those lessons she taught him, along with waking up at 5 a.m. to do shooting drills at age 9 is how he became the No. 1 player in the country as the Consensus National Player of the Year, a goal he set at age 5. Developed a solid friendship first with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft by the Memphis Grizzlies in guard Ja Morant out of Murray State University, who he played AAU Basketball with for the South Carolina Hornets, even though back then he was a very shy kid, and his teammate at Duke in RJ Barrett, the No. 3 overall pick by the New York Knicks. 

To put into perspective the kind of teammate Williamson was at Duke, he said no to a lot of things where he would the center of attention like magazine covers and interviews. 

In fact, ESPN’s College Basketball studio and play-by-play analyst said during the draft on Thursday that when he was going to be interviewed for a piece on him being the leading candidate for the 2018-19 John R. Wooden Award, sponsored by Wendy’s, which he ultimately won, he talked about Barrett instead of himself. 

That was a perfect example of Williamson’s ability to play and blend in with the rest of his teammates both in high school and at Duke, no matter what their stature on the squad is from the best player to the last man on the bench. As ESPN’s College Basketball analyst and former Blue Devil Jay Bilas said of the 18-year-old Williamson, “uncommon maturity.” 

“A lot of guys worry about stats. Who can score the most? Who’s going to be an All-Star. This kid you can tell he’s not worried about that.” ESPN NBA studio and color analyst Chauncey Billups said on Thursday. “You can tell his teammates at Duke love playing with him.” 

“He’s very supportive of guys, even if he was on the bench. When Barrett or [Cam] Reddish made a huge play, Williamson was the first one celebrating. And that’s a big, big deal when you talk about somebody with this type of magnitude that comes with it.” 

A perfect example of Williamson’s uncommon maturity is back at Spartanburg Day High School, he took a creative writing poetry elective in his senior year. He told ESPN’s host of “NBA: The Jump” Rachel Nichols in an interview prior to Thursday’s draft that he took that class in large part due to the impression made on him by the teacher of that class, where he would always see in the hallways of school and the positive energy he always gave off. 

At first Williamson did not think much of the opportunity but when he really brought a great mindset to the class and how the teacher of the course said to him that whatever he wrote in here would remain in the class. This class his teacher told him was his “safe haven.” 

Speaking of a player with uncommon maturity and work ethic, that is the best way you can describe Morant, who the Grizzlies as previously mentioned took No. 2 overall.   

Morant was an unranked recruit coming out of high school that was not highly recruited. In fact, he was discovered in an auxiliary gym, which led him going to Murray State. University where he shined averaging 24.5 points, No. 2 overall in Division I; a Division One leading 10.0 assists and 5.7 rebounds, while registering a Division One leading three triple-doubles. 

What made the 2018-19 “Associated Press” First-Team All-American the electrifying, scorer, and passer, who scored 38 points in a game against the Alabama Crimson Tide this past season was the legendary drills his father Ronnie “Tee” Morant put him through in their backyard. 

Those drills consisted of jumping tires, agility drills, making off the dribble jump shots to shooting jumpers after making crossover attempts through cones. 

It is thanks to that hard work, developing a belief in himself that he is as good a basketball player as anyone in the nation and the support from his family that Morant went from an unknown to the player the Grizzlies hope can get them back to the heights they were when they were in the Conference Finals earlier this decade. 

“It started with me,” Morant said to Taylor on Thursday night about how he got to this point. “I feel like if you don’t believe in yourself than who will?”

Morant added, “I had the right people around me, my family coaches always lifted me up and pushed me to work hard and be the best player I could be.”  

On top of that he had his aforementioned father “Tee,” who played with Hall of Famer and the all-time NBA leader in threes made Ray Allen at Hillcrest High School in Dalzell, SC put his basketball dreams on hold to help his son get to the next level, which he did. 

The biggest lesson he taught his son is perseverance, especially when the naysayers speak their mind about what they think of his son’s game. 

Ja said that his dad was his first so-called hater who let him know that he was not good enough that he lacked this or he lacked that. 

That made the young Morant work harder and stay focused on getting better each time he practiced and when he got into game action, and it did pay off. More than anything it showed that when Morant gets criticized by the print or broadcast media, which he will, he has the necessary ability to shake it off and simply get in the gym and work to the point he will be ready to answers his skeptics on the hardwood with his game and not so much his mouth. 

“Basically, hard work, fundamentals, dedication to everything, you know,” Mr. Morant said to Taylor about how he made his son into the basketball player he is today. “And I mean, once he told me that he loved it, and showed me he loved it, I wanted to pump everything in me inside him so he can reach the highest point.”

“Praise God. Praise God, he worked hard for it.” 

Having a strong work ethic and a commitment to working at being a great basketball player or doing anything great in general is one thing. It is another to want to go and be part of a team where they have been bad for quite a while. 

Of all the places that RJ Barrett wanted to begin his NBA career he wanted to go to the Knicks, who have not made the playoffs since the 2012-13 season. 

Since the 1999-00 season, the Knicks have won only two postseason series and missed the playoffs in 14 of the last 18 seasons, including the last six in succession. 

In that time period, Knicks fans have been through many draft nights that have consisted of many tears and too many disappointing choices to count. 

When Barrett shook Commissioner Silver’s hand on Thursday night after being selected No. 3 overall by the guys from the “Big Apple” there were cheers by Knicks fans at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY, home of the Brooklyn Nets cheered. Even the most famous Knicks fans in now Oscar Award-winning director Spike Lee stood and applauded. 

The Knicks are not only getting a great player in Barrett, who averaged 22.6 points, an ACC record for a freshmen, with 7.6 rebounds and 4.3 assists in his lone season for Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski in 2018-19, they are getting a player who was adamant and open about wanting to play at Madison Square Garden, “The World’s Most Famous Arena.” 

“New York is ‘The Mecca,’ you know,” Barrett said when asked by Davis about why he wanted to embrace playing in New York City. “You see Madison Square Garden, and it’s always packed every single game. That’s what I love to play in, you know.” 

“I love to play in intensity and playing for the crowd and get everybody excited, and excitement. And I also want to win.” 

On top of that, Barrett is a player who wants to be great and expects to be a great player, which is something he has been preparing for since the age 12 when he told his father Rowan Barrett, who played is college basketball at St. John’s University and is the Vice President and General Manager of the Canada’s national team that he wanted to make basketball his career. 

Barrett, whose mother Kesha, a native of Brooklyn, NY wrote all of his goals on a whiteboard when he was a pre-teen and he accomplished all of them saying to Taylor by, “Just working every day, you know.” 

“My parents took a lot of time out of to make sure I was okay and made sure I’m good. So, really working hard.”  

He added, “My dad is a very hardworking man, more than anybody you’ll ever know. I just appreciate that a lot.”

A big part of that preparation was playing for the Canadian National team, where he played against grown men in his late teens. 

It was during this part of his life Barrett would watch Knicks games with his grandfather, who was a huge Knicks fan and they would watch games together. He would always tell his grandson that one day he was going to play for them. 

“That was crazy,” Barrett said on Thursday. “That was one of the reasons why I was crying, because we used to watch the Knicks growing up and he would always tell me I was going to be a Knick. I’m sad he can’t be here to see it. But I’m just very happy, man.” 

Someone else who has played a huge part in Barrett’s development as both a player and person is his Godfather Steve Nash, a fellow Canadian and two-time Kia MVP who played his NBA career for the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers. 

For Zion Williamson, Ja Morant and RJ Barrett, Thursday night was the crowning moment as far as their basketball lives are concerned. They were drafted into the NBA respectably by the New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies and New York Knicks as the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 overall picks in the 2019 NBA Draft. 

This moment was also a crowning achievement for their parents and their hard work and sacrifices to see their kids achieve their dream, which made them even more proud as they showed and expressed with tears on Thursday night.

“He’s worked since [age] 5 for this moment, and when you know it’s coming, you just got to wait for it to happen,” Ms. Anderson, Williamson’s mother said to Taylor, adding, “And to watch his hard work payoff we’re so happy for him. We’re so happy.” 

Morant said to Taylor that when he got drafted by the Grizzlies on Thursday that it meant a lot not just for him but his father Mr. Ronnie “Tee” as well. 

“I don’t want to get a little emotional up here, man. But I just want to thank him for everything he’s done for me. He made me who I am today, and just thankful for it all.” 

Perhaps the reach for he Kleenex moment of the 2019 NBA Draft was when Mr. Barrett said to Taylor while his son RJ, one of now 27 Canadians to have entered the NBA, 18 of them in the last decade put his head on his dad’s right shoulder while crying, “You know your children make goals and they go out and achieve them. YO have to be proud very proud.” 

He added, “I’m proud of you son.” 

Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 6/20/19 3 p.m. edition “NBA: The Jump: Draft Special from the Green Carpet,” on ESPN with Rachel, Nichols, Chauncey Billups, Mike Schmitz, Adrian Wojnarowski, Bobby Marks, Amin Elhassan, Jay Bilas, Brian Windhorst, and Kendrick Perkins; 6/20/19 7 p.m. “2019 NBA Draft,” on ESPN, presented by State Farm with Rece Davis, Chauncey Billups, Jay Bilas, Adrian Wojnarowski, Brian Windhorst, and Maria Taylor; 6/21/19 Newsday stories, “RJ Already A Fan Favorite,” by Steve Popper and “No. 1 Overall: It’s Zion,” by Barbara Barker; 6/21/19 3 p.m. edition “NBA: The Jump,” on ESPN with Rachel Nichols, Kendrick Perkins, and Brian Windhorst; 6/24/19 3 p.m. edition “NBA: The Jump” on ESPN with Rachel Nichols, Dave McMenamin, Scottie Pippen, and Chiney Ogwumike;  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_Knicks_seasons.”