Mikey Williams doesn't need a chance. He needs to stop lying to himself | Giannotto

All Mikey Williams needed was a chance.

That’s what the former Memphis basketball signee wrote on an Instagram post Friday afternoon announcing his commitment to UCF just four days after entering the transfer portal.

It was unintentionally an ending that reinforced all of the preconceived recruiting notions Williams still will have to dispel at his new school.

This high-profile basketball prospect — whose fame and reputation have more to do with being a social media phenomenon than anything he has ever accomplished on the court — crafted a new version of reality through the very platform that turned him into a millionaire before he was a high school graduate.

Williams doesn’t need a chance. He needs to stop lying to himself about why it didn’t work out at Memphis, for the sake of the once-promising basketball career he and the people around him have done their best to completely mangle in recent years.

He’s UCF coach Johnny Dawkins’ distraction now, and that probably stings Penny Hardaway. He wanted to coach Williams. He made that clear as he stood by Williams even when many coaches would have ditched him once he allegedly fired a gun at a car full of passengers outside his San Diego area home in March.

“I’d do it again, to be very honest with you,” Hardaway said Wednesday when asked if he regretted supporting Williams during his legal troubles. “That’s what I’m in this business for — to stick my neck out on the line for kids and young men, and hope that they appreciate it.”

Williams has a funny way of showing appreciation.

Forget for a moment the argument to bring Williams on the Memphis team in the middle of the season never made much sense. He isn’t a veteran coming off an Elite Eight appearance at a position of need like Nae’Qwan Tomlin. He’s a college freshman who hasn’t faced top competition in years because his handlers emphasized his brand over basketball.

Forget all of those reasons why patience was likely the correct path to take.

If there was any doubt left that it was for the best Williams cut ties with Memphis, the statement his attorney sent out earlier this week sealed the deal. It was a textbook example of blame shifting, word manipulation and unnecessary drama.

The lawyer, Troy Owens, complains that Memphis wasn’t making Williams’ immediate future enough of a priority — after his legal team and his family insisted in November when Williams got his plea deal that they’d be content to wait until next season to play at Memphis, if that’s what it took. Back then, Hardaway’s loyalty apparently meant something.

Owens offered up a bunch of inaccurate or misleading arguments to paint Williams as a victim of a university's due diligence.

“What was even more frustrating was that Mr. Williams learned that the committee [review] was also going to decide whether, or not, he would be allowed to play in the 2024-2025 season even after being sentenced to a misdemeanor,” Owens wrote.

Wrong.

Williams pleaded guilty to one felony count of making a criminal threat and to a special allegation of using a firearm during the threat. It doesn’t get reduced to a misdemeanor until August, if Williams stays out of trouble between now and then. That seems like a fairly big caveat for a university committee to consider.

“Remaining on the roster at the University of Memphis meant that, had the committee ruled that Mr. Williams could NOT play in the 2024-2025 season, he faced the possibility of missing two years of basketball,” Owens wrote.

Wrong again.

Memphis would be ruling only whether he’s allowed to play at Memphis, not on his status with the NCAA. He could have transferred anywhere between now and April and been eligible to play next season so long as the new school admitted him.

Williams will need a waiver from the NCAA to play this season because he’s arriving at UCF after the deadline that allows players to transfer without sitting out. Maybe there’s an exemption for beating eight of nine felony charges we haven’t heard about before. The guess here is he still won’t play college basketball this season.

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This had very little to do with Memphis, or the university process determining whether Williams should be allowed on campus — a process he believed was taking too long.

This was about Williams’ decision to use a gun in a dangerous manner. Just because he got a favorable plea deal from a San Diego County prosecutor, just because UCF is apparently willing to let him into school, doesn’t change what came out as a result of the case.

Nobody ever denied Williams shot a gun at that car full of passengers. Indeed, during preliminary hearing proceedings in October, there were even allegations of witness tampering by Williams’ side.

None of which, by the way, should have disqualified Williams from playing at Memphis. I didn’t mind the wait-and-see approach Hardaway and Memphis took the past 10 months or so. But the circumstances, and the attention those circumstances received, did disqualify Memphis from making a hasty decision simply because Williams decided it was time for his basketball career to resume.

So now he and his millions of TikTok followers are off to UCF.

Maybe he’ll give this school the chance he wasn’t willing to give Memphis.

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on X: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Mikey Williams needs to stop lying to himself about Memphis basketball