Lou Williams, a former NBA player, chose to forgo college and enter the NBA Draft in 2005. JAY-Z was a factor in his decision.
Earlier this month, Lou Will spoke on the DraftKings podcast The Starting Five and discussed how a night out on the town with LeBron James and Hov convinced him he didn’t need to spend another day in a classroom.
“I left high school right away. My thing was that I started having experiences in my senior year of high school. LeBron James and Maverick Carter introduced me to JAY-Z one night, he remembered. “I spent the night kicking it with Jay, and the next day I went to school.
“I was thinking to myself as I looked around the class, ‘I’m nothing like none of y’all.'” You understand what I mean? I was like, “I’m not going to sit in another classroom after this,” because I started feeling weird. I am incapable of doing it. That’s not the route I intend to take, in my opinion. I therefore begin to get ready as though I were going to the NBA.
In his junior and senior years at South Gwinnett High School, Williams won back-to-back Mr. Georgia Basketball awards, which gave him cause to think he might make the quantum leap to the NBA.
Lou Will, who was ranked as the nation’s top prospect by Rivals, had already committed to play for the University of Georgia before declaring for the NBA Draft, where the Philadelphia 76ers took him with pick number 45 in the second round in 2005.
Lou Williams went on to have a distinguished 17-year career, and during that time, he and Jamal Crawford became the only players to ever win the Sixth Man of the Year Award three times (in 2015, 2018, and 2019).
Williams, who is 36 years old, made his NBA retirement official earlier this month. He played for the Atlanta Hawks, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Toronto Raptors, and Philadelphia 76ers throughout his stint in the NBA.
Lou Williams has also experimented with the rap scene. On Drake’s “6 Man” from 2015, he was mentioned by name, and he also worked with Meek Mill and Jadakiss.
