My favorite Blazers: Buck Williams
Buck and Mimi Williams have been married 37 years (courtesy the Williams family)
The husky voice carried across the phone lines from Albania, north of Greece off the Adriatic Sea, where Buck Williams and his wife were visiting their son Malek, who is married to an Albanian woman.
“We’re here to see our first grandchild, my princess, Araya,” Williams said.
Buck and his first granddaughter, the “princess” (courtesy the Williams family)
Appreciative that Buck would return my call while enjoying such a momentous occasion at a location so distant, I congratulated him on his good fortune. I told him I was reaching out because I am singling him out on this website as one of my favorite Trail Blazers.
“About time you got around to me,” he said with a laugh.
Charles Linwood Williams was a terrific basketball player, but also a top-quality human being. The combination of talent and character served him well during a distinguished 17-year career, including seven with Portland from 1989-96.
Williams was the missing link that provided the impetus for the Blazers’ three-year run from 1989-92 in which they averaged just shy of 60 regular-season wins and twice reached the NBA Finals. Teaming with Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey and Kevin Duckworth in the starting five, Williams coagulated the group into one with synergy and purpose capable of beating any opponent on a given night.
On June 24, 1989, Portland acquired Williams in a trade with New Jersey. They sent back oft-injured center Sam Bowie and a first-round draft pick. With that pick, the Nets took Mookie Blaylock, who became a starting point guard for many years in the league and played in the 1994 All-Star game. Even so, it was one of the best deals in Trail Blazer history.
Williams arrived in Portland in his prime, at 29 an eight-year veteran and three-time All-Star selection who was one of the best power forwards in the game. New Jersey had won just one playoff series during his time there.
“It was a pivotal time in my career, and I saw it as an opportunity to help a team that could go deep into the playoffs,” he said.
Buck Williams, here dunking over Boston’s Larry Bird, was a rock in the Blazers’ run to a pair of NBA Finals appearances in the early 1990s (courtesy Bruce Ely/Trail Blazers)
The 1988-89 Blazers had gone 39-43 and been swept 3-0 by the L.A. Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. Williams replaced defensive-minded Caldwell Jones, who at 38 had averaged 2.8 points and 4.2 rebounds the previous season. In truth, the Blazers used four true centers who played at least 17 minutes apiece that season — Duckworth, Jones, Bowie and Steve Johnson. Now they had a true starting power forward.
Paul Allen had purchased the club the previous year for $70 million, which today covers about a year and a half’s salary for Damian Lillard. It was Rick Adelman’s first year as head coach.
“Now I had the right coach, fabulous teammates, great talent and a great place to play,” Williams said. “It was a blessing to have an opportunity for once to play on a championship team.”
Williams knew exactly what his role was. With the Nets he had averaged more than 18 points three times. That wasn’t necessary in Portland.
“My biggest priority was to contain Karl Malone,” he said. “Utah, Phoenix, Seattle and the Lakers — those teams were real threats in the West. My focus was to do whatever I could to make sure we were able to beat them. It was about bringing toughness and inside scoring and some leadership. Those were the pieces we needed. I sacrificed a lot of my (offensive) game doing that, but it was worthwhile in our quest for a championship.”
Williams made an immediate impact. The 1989-90 Blazers went 59-23, tied for the second-best record in the league with Detroit behind the Lakers’ 63-19 mark. Portland beat Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix on its way to the NBA Finals, where the Pistons prevailed 4-1. Williams averaged 13.6 points and 9.8 rebounds and was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive first-team.
After adding Danny Ainge to a bench that already featured young Cliff Robinson, the Blazers were the talk of the NBA in 1990-91, compiling a league-best 63-19 record. They beat Seattle and Utah on the way to the West finals, where they lost their opener at home to the Lakers and fell in six games. Williams averaged 11.7 points and 9.4 rebounds, led the league with a .602 field-goal percentage and was again selected for the All-Defensive first team.
Portland was back in the NBA Finals in 1992 after winning the Pacific Division with a 57-25 mark, then eliminating the Lakers, Suns and Jazz en route to a showdown with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls prevailed in six games. Williams averaged 11.3 points and 8.8 rebounds, again led the league in field goal percentage (.604) and was on the All-Defensive second team.
Portland has never been back to the NBA Finals since. After adding Rod Strickland and Mario Elie, the Blazers went 51-31 in 1992-93. But Drexler battled knee issues that limited him to 49 regular-season games, and the Blazers were upset 3-1 by the Spurs in the first round of the playoffs. The win total dipped to 47 the following season, and after the Blazers fell in four games to Houston in the first round, Adelman was fired. Duckworth had already been traded. Soon Kersey and Porter were gone, too. Williams was the last of the regulars from the glory years to depart, leaving as a free agent after the 1995-96 campaign, just before the arrival of the Jail Blazer era.
Williams played two more seasons as a reserve with the New York Knicks, ending a career that saw him become the seventh player to total 16,000 points and 13,000 rebounds. He started every game he played for his first six seasons with the Blazers. With Portland, he averaged 10.2 points and 8.7 rebounds while shooting .550 from the field.
Buck’s career, however, was not about numbers. Undersized by power forward standards at 6-8 and only 225 pounds, he went toe-to-toe with Malone and Tom Chambers and Shawn Kemp and Terry Cummings and Sam Perkins and more than held his own. His battles with Malone — who called Williams his toughest adversary of that time — are legendary. Buck ran the court better than most at his position and, like Kersey, finished off many fast breaks with a resounding dunk.
Buck was a quiet leader, a man respected around the league for his integrity. That transferred to his election as president of the NBA Players Association from 1994-97. Williams was heavily involved in negotiations with the league during the 1995 labor dispute that resulted in a lockout through most of the summer, but avoided loss of any games. It was a lot of extra work, but Buck took it on with pride.
Surprisingly, Williams had only one coaching stint — as an assistant in Portland under Nate McMillan for two seasons from 2010-12. For most of the time since his retirement, he has run a real estate investment company in the Washington D.C. area. Buck and his wife of 37 years, Mimi, live in Potomac, Md.
“I never stopped working,” said Williams, 63. “I can’t sit home and play golf every day. Both my sons (Malek and Julien) are involved in the business. It’s been a source of a lot of family pride.”
I covered the Blazers with Dwight Jaynes for The Oregonian from 1989-92 and found Williams accommodating, accessible and a pleasure to work with. One question I had never asked: Where did the middle name “Linwood” come from?
“My mom came up with Charles,” he said. “She got the idea from a neighbor. Linwood? I don’t know where she got that from, but it’s one reason why my wife chose not to make our oldest son a junior.”
And Buck?
“When I was growing up, they called me ‘Charlie Buck.’ ” he said. “A friend of the family said, ‘That kid is as big as a buck,’ and it stuck. Then one day another friend said, ‘Buck is a good baseball name. We’re going to get rid of the Charlie part.’ It was just Buck from then on, and I never looked back.”
Williams enjoyed his time playing at Maryland, where he twice won All-ACC honors and was a member of the 1980 Olympic team that was derailed by the U.S. boycott. He was the No. 3 pick of the 1981 NBA draft and had eight successful seasons with the Nets. But I suggested that he never had as much fun playing basketball as he did during his time in Portland.
“No question,” he said. “I had great teammates on and off the court. Clyde and Terry and I are great friends to this day. The same with Jerome and Duck before they passed. Our chemistry was phenomenal. Bucky Buckwalter and Harry Glickman and Mr. Allen did a great job organizing that team. They got it right.”
He said of all his accomplishments, he is most proud of the Blazers’ run from 1989-92.
“We didn’t win a championship,” he said, “but to put three years together like we did is almost unheard of. We beat a lot of great teams during that period. We came up short in the end, but the competition was pretty tough.”
Part of Williams’ legacy is his durability. He played all 82 regular-season games eight times and at least 80 games in 12 of his 17 seasons. And he played well enough to merit consideration for entry into the Naismith Hall of Fame. Two years ago, I wrote the following piece about a presentation designed by the sports analytics club at a New York prep school to promote his candidacy:
I’ve also written several times that Kersey’s No. 25 jersey should be retired by the Blazers. It’s no stretch to say that Williams’ No. 52, too, is deserving of that honor.
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