University of North Carolina Athletics
Marvin Williams in His Own Words
October 20, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Oct. 20, 2004
Anyone who will travel all the way across the country to get a player must really care about that player as a person. That's how I felt when Roy Williams came from Chapel Hill to Bremerton to recruit me. He made that trip a few times, and he also came to see me play in Florida, and that was important to me. He cares about me as a person, not just about my basketball ability. I know that if I fell and broke my knee today he would still care the same amount about me.
Even before he started recruiting me, I knew about Carolina -- I think everyone knows about Carolina. My dad is from Wallace, NC, and he loved Carolina growing up. He moved out to Washington before I was born, but he still talked about them a lot, and because of that it became my dream to go to UNC. He had a set of Coach Smith's instructional videos that I watched a lot. They focused on things like playing defense, proper footwork, things like that. I'm sure my dad still has them, but I haven't gotten to talk to Coach Smith about them yet. Because of those videos and my dad talking about it so much, it didn't matter to me when I got older that the coaches and situation at Carolina had changed. I still wanted to follow my dream.
It was a long way to think about going to college, though. I'm a homebody. I love to be at home with my friends and family. Thinking about going all the way across the country was tough. My dad has some family around here, some aunts and uncles and cousins, but it's still tough. I'm sure once the season starts my dad will be here all the time, but I'll miss being around my friends. On the day before I left for summer school, some of my best friends and I all went and got a tattoo -- "B'Town's Finest."
It was hard to leave those guys but it was a good decision to come to summer school. It was great to meet Quentin and the rest of my teammates. People love basketball here. Just walking across campus, it's not unusual for someone you don't know to say hello to you and call you by name.
I've learned a lot about the North Carolina tradition. Everybody works so hard every day. It is really difficult to be a basketball player at this level. It was a learning experience for me. The first couple of times you have to guard Antawn Jamison in a pickup game, you can't help but learn from that.
