The rise and fall of Mikey Williams
Once a social media sensation trumpeted as the best player in the 2023 class, Mikey Williams is now facing a legal fight for his freedom.
Inside Puma’s 18,000-square-foot flagship store in New York City, the shoe company’s newest pitchman made a startling declaration.
“I’m trying to be worth a billion dollars by the time I’m 25,” teenage basketball star Mikey Williams told the “I am Athlete” podcast just over a year ago.
At the time, Williams’ goal seemed audacious, if not implausible. Now it’s a jarring reminder of how quickly a celebrated prospect’s dream can unravel. Once a social media sensation who rose to the top of the 2023 class, amassed more than 5 million Instagram and TikTok followers and became one of the early faces of the name, image and likeness era, Williams is now facing a legal fight for his freedom.
Williams was arrested on April 13 in the wake of a late-night incident two weeks earlier at the $1.2 million hilltop home he owns east of San Diego. Angry that visitors unexpectedly showed up to his house, Williams allegedly threatened to shoot them. Then he allegedly fired a handgun at their vehicle as they drove away, damaging the trunk and rear windshield but leaving all six occupants unharmed.
Williams has pleaded not guilty to six counts of assault with a firearm, one count of firing into an occupied motor vehicle and two counts of making threats that could result in death or great bodily injury. The nine felony charges carry a penalty of up to 30 years in prison if Williams is convicted.
[Editor's note: On Nov. 30, Williams reached a plea deal that will likely allow him to avoid jail time.]
When his University of Memphis teammates opened the season Monday with a win over Jackson State, Williams remained in California awaiting the Dec. 14 start of his jury trial. Williams is enrolled in online classes and remains on the roster, but does not have access to any team facilities or activities, a Memphis spokesperson confirmed this week.
Arash Hashemi is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who has closely followed media coverage of Williams’ case and the pretrial hearings. He describes the witness testimony and other circumstantial evidence against Williams as “very strong,” so strong that there is a real chance the 19-year-old does significant time.
“I know the justice system says innocent until proven guilty, but if you’re charged with nine counts, it’s an uphill battle no matter what,” Hashemi told Yahoo Sports. “Unless some new evidence comes out that we don’t know about, I think his defense attorneys have their work cut out for them. I don’t think it looks good for him.”
‘I’m up right now’
The klieg lights of sports celebrity first shined on Mikey Williams the summer before he started seventh grade. That’s when he made a name for himself toppling the only middle-school team in America attracting frenzied crowds, TV cameras and autograph seekers.
Williams’ upstart travel team came to the prestigious USBA national championships with a goal of earning the chance to face Bronny James and the juggernaut North Coast Blue Chips. USBA founder Mark Thompson recalls Williams’ team signing up for the tournament on the condition that the Blue Chips weren’t placed in the same pool and that they wouldn’t face each other until deep into tournament play.
“They felt like they were good enough to advance to play the Blue Chips and to beat the Blue Chips,” Thompson told Yahoo Sports. “They felt like it was a matchup worthy of a semifinal or a title game.”
Williams wasn’t the son of an NBA icon like Bronny, but he too came from a family of athletes. His mother, Charisse, played softball at Hampton University and is still the MEAC’s all-time single-season leader in doubles and RBIs. His father, Mahlon, was an all-San Diego high school basketball player whose checkered academic transcript derailed his hopes of landing a Division I scholarship.
There was a basketball in Williams’ hands when he was still in diapers. He honed his game playing on the outdoor courts behind his family’s apartment, doing drills with his dad or soaking up hard lessons from godbrother Malcolm Thomas and family friend Tyrone Shelley, both of whom went on to play at San Diego State.
By the time Williams’ team earned a crack at the Blue Chips at USBA Nationals, he was faster, stronger and more skilled than most boys his age. He outplayed Bronny and piled up more than 30 points, showcasing a smooth step-back jumper, an explosive first step and a knack for finishing through contact.
“Mikey kind of dominated,” Thompson recalled. “Everyone was assuming that Bronny and the Blue Chips were going to win the whole thing, but Mikey was the premier player in that game. People left the building saying, ‘Who is this Mikey Williams kid?’”
That might have been the last time that Williams walked into a gym where most people didn’t already know his name. The superstar-making machinery began to rev up. Several publications declared Williams to be the nation’s top-ranked seventh grader. Mixtape creators began filming his games and posting his highlights. Bronny befriended him and invited him to join him on the Blue Chips.
When the Blue Chips returned to USBA Nationals the following summer, Williams soaked up almost as much camera time as Bronny. Videos of LeBron marveling at Williams’ skill level drew millions of pageviews. Preteen and teenage viewers in particular couldn’t get enough of Williams’ flashy game and effortless swagger.
To Rick Lewis, founder of the Phenom Hoop Report scouting service, the fawning hype for a middle-school standout was dangerous and exploitative. Lewis said it raised expectations for Williams to an impossibly high level when there was no way to accurately project how much taller than 6-foot-1 he would grow or how he would develop physically.
“There’s no such thing as a can’t-miss NBA prospect that early in the process,” Lewis told Yahoo Sports. “We’re putting too much pressure on these kids.”
The Williams family didn’t heed that warning. If anything, they fueled Mikey Mania by using TikTok and Instagram to market him and build his brand. Williams began disseminating carefully curated pictures and videos showing off his on-court grind, a trendy outfit or a new tattoo. Sometimes Williams would even pose in front of a flashy sports car that he wasn't yet old enough to drive.
When Williams was ready to begin high school, his family invited a sports media company into their home. Gen Z-focused Overtime filmed Williams everywhere he went for a YouTube reality series chronicling his basketball career and family life.
In the debut episode, Williams surpasses 1 million Instagram followers after posting a video of himself throwing down a soaring 360 behind-the-back dunk. His family celebrates the milestone by presenting him a cake topped with seven candles — a number 1 followed by six zeroes.
Sitting on a throne chair on a hillside, with his hometown in the background, Williams explained the significance of the achievement to the Overtime cameras.
“It signifies I’m not up next,” he said. “I’m up right now.”
Perception vs. reality
The unlikely stage for the next chapter of Williams’ basketball career only made his story more relatable. The so-called “best 8th grader in the world” turned down numerous invitations from prep powerhouses to play for his humble hometown public school, located one freeway exit north of the Tijuana border.
San Ysidro had no history of hanging banners or sending players to high-level colleges, but Williams instantly put the Border Boyz on the map. He scored 41 points in his high school debut. He went for 50 a few weeks later in front of Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade. In his ninth high school game, he erupted for 77, breaking San Diego County’s single-game scoring record.
The fact that Williams piled up all those points against lackluster competition didn’t slow down the hype train. MaxPreps named him its national freshman of the year. Fans, young and old, waited more than an hour after games to beg for autographs or pictures. Drake followed Williams on social media and asked the teen to send him a jersey.
California’s strict COVID protocols eventually caused Williams to transfer out-of-state before his sophomore year to ensure that he was able to play basketball. Williams and his father moved to North Carolina so that the 16-year-old could play for Lake Norman Christian, an emerging basketball powerhouse with a few other Division I prospects.
Every time Williams played at a tournament or showcase, there were “insane crowds, grown adults screaming for pictures and autographs,” former Lake Norman Christian coach Patrick McCarthy told Yahoo Sports. McCarthy remembers Williams trying to accommodate his fans whenever possible, but sometimes the crowds were too big and he had to sneak out a back door.
“We had to get him different protocols so he could even make it to the car,” McCarthy said.
Never was the atmosphere crazier than when Lake Norman Christian faced off against Ypsilanti Prep in a nationally televised matchup in Greenville, South Carolina. The 3,000-seat gym sold out weeks ahead of time to see Williams and reigning Gatorade national player of the year Emoni Bates play against one another.
A security guard hired by the Williams family accompanied Williams wherever he went that day, Gold Level Sports & Entertainment CEO Darren Duncan told Yahoo Sports. When asked if he recalled any other high school players requiring that level of security at events he organized, Duncan said, “Only Mikey and Bronny. They’re the only two that I can remember.”
Those in Williams’ circle during that era say that he handled his burgeoning celebrity about as well as any teenager could. Going on stage with Drake or playing video games with YoungBoy didn’t cut into the time Williams spent working on his craft.
Basketball skills trainer Ryan Razooky said that, outside of his family, Williams might have been the person he saw most at the height of the COVID pandemic. Every day, as often as two or three times a day, Williams would ask Razooky to open his hole-in-the-wall gym so that he had somewhere to work out.
“He’d go hard and then he’d ask his friends if they wanted to run sprints or the stairs afterward,” Razooky said with a laugh. “They’d be like, ‘Bro, are you crazy? What’s wrong with you?’”
Even so, by the end of Williams’ sophomore season, NBA scouts and college recruiting analysts were becoming more concerned about his trajectory as a prospect. Yes, he was an explosive athlete. Yes, he could hit a step-back 3 or throw down a high-flying dunk. But Williams was still just 6-2, still inefficient as a scorer, still prone to errant passes and ill-advised shots.
“There were two different worlds,” Rivals basketball analyst Rob Cassidy told Yahoo Sports. “People who weren't involved in basketball recruiting probably thought Mikey Williams was the No. 1 player in the country. He was all over YouTube, all over TikTok, all over Instagram. But if you talked to anyone around the sport, it was fairly obvious it was not going to happen by then. His popularity was so far ahead of his talent and development.”
Mikey Williams plots a new course
As Williams’ NBA future became less certain, the adults who stewarded his basketball career plotted a new course for him.
His dad founded Vertical Academy, a glorified club program that had no home gym, was unaffiliated with any league or high school athletic association and required players to take online classes from Lake Norman Christian. Vertical Academy played a 40-plus-game national schedule, getting on an airplane almost every weekend to face renowned prep schools like Montverde, Oak Hill Academy and Prolific Prep.
To NBA scouts, the problem wasn’t that Vertical Academy lost more games than it won. That was always a possibility given the strength of the competition and the fact that NC State signee Trey Parker was the only other high-level recruit on the team besides Williams.
The real issue was that winning sometimes didn’t seem to be Vertical Academy’s top priority. Too often no one around Williams seemed troubled if he made no effort to defend or he missed most of the shots that he hoisted as long as he delivered a few social media-worthy highlights.
"I wouldn’t say it was the best route for his growth and development," an NBA scout said. "If it was really about long-term development and about getting better, a Montverde or IMG would have been a much better option."
Around the same time that his dad launched Vertical Academy, Williams also signed with Excel Sports Management to pursue name, image and likeness deals for him. Excel helped Williams secure his first-of-its-kind endorsement deal with Puma, launch an NFT collection and land a starring role in an NBA 2K22 commercial opposite Jayson Tatum.
Those deals may have provided an undisclosed influx of money, but aligning with Puma came at the expense of Williams’ long-term growth and development. It kept Williams from competing on the Nike or Adidas grassroots circuits, either of which would have provided structure, strong competition and a platform for evaluation by college coaches.
By April 2022, Williams was fed up with the direction things were going and ready to make a change. He made a surprise YouTube announcement: He was done with pop-up prep schools. He would instead return to San Ysidro for his senior year of high school.
To Williams, playing for his hometown school gave him “more purpose.” He said he wanted to conclude his high school career by capturing an open-division state championship for San Ysidro. Williams called it, “the perfect story, the perfect ending.”
Of course, the way that Williams’ return to San Ysidro unfolded was anything but perfect. Right away, it became clear this sequel wouldn’t live up to the original.
Williams no-shows
For one weekend each summer, the center of the high school basketball universe is the invite-only Section 7 Team Camp in Glendale, Arizona. Elite high school teams from across the country descend upon State Farm Stadium for a live-period showcase that annually attracts more than 500 college coaches.
Organizers placed San Ysidro in one of the event’s marquee divisions the summer before Williams’ senior year because they were told he would be playing. Fans and college coaches packed the bleachers on opening night to watch Williams face off against Sacramento Jesuit’s Andrej Stojakovic, a fellow five-star recruit and the son of former NBA all-star Peja Stojakovic.
The stage was set for Williams to reassert himself as an elite prospect. Except that Williams himself wasn’t in the building.
It wasn’t until pregame warmups that organizers learned Williams hadn’t shown up, sources told Yahoo Sports. One source said that San Ysidro coach Terry Tucker told him that he too was caught off-guard by Williams’ absence.
Without Williams, San Ysidro wasn’t competitive in any of its games that weekend. The college coaches who hoped this would finally be their chance to evaluate Williams in person also were unable to do so.
Even still, Williams remained a high-level college prospect. In November 2022, he ended a mysterious recruitment when he and San Ysidro teammate JJ Taylor both committed to Memphis during a visit to the school. Kansas and USC were among those that also showed interest in Williams at times during his high school career. Other big-time programs shied away amid talk that he might choose an alternate route to the NBA besides college basketball.
When the high school season began, Williams sometimes played like he was already looking ahead to college. San Ysidro boasted the only two four- or five-star recruits in the talent-scarce San Diego area, yet the Cougars failed to capture their league title and lost in the semifinals of the San Diego Open Division playoffs.
Some of San Ysidro’s 13 losses came against elite Southern California teams or out-of-state powerhouses. Others came against the likes of El Camino, Carlsbad, Mater Dei Catholic and Montgomery, all lesser-talented teams from the San Diego area.
Carlsbad coach Clark Allard studied video of San Ysidro’s previous games before his team’s Jan. 7 matchup with the Cougars. The version of Williams that Allard saw on film only bore a passing resemblance to the ultra-competitive rising star he remembered from Williams’ freshman year.
“We were actually laughing in a few of our film sessions about his lack of defensive intensity and buy-in,” Allard told Yahoo Sports. “Every film session we watched, it didn’t look like he was interested in playing any defense.”
The night of the Carlsbad-San Ysidro game, Allard said Williams and Taylor didn’t warm up with their teammates. Allard wasn’t certain they were playing until just before tipoff when San Ysidro announced its starting five.
Williams scored his usual 25-plus points against Carlsbad in a 100-89 loss, but neither his gaudy stat line nor his glitzy highlight reel told the whole story. For every soaring dunk, there was a possession where he didn’t hustle back on defense. For every step-back 3-pointer, there was a missed chance to help rebound. For every behind-the-back dribble, there was a moment when he got caught flat-footed and let his man blow by him.
“It felt like he was kind of going through the motions,” Allard said. “It felt like he was into his persona more than he was into the actual season.”
Questions about Williams’ mindset and effort contributed to him failing to make the McDonald’s All-American game, dropping out of 2024 mock drafts and plummeting in the 2023 rankings. Rivals dropped Williams all the way to No. 71 in his class in its final 2023 update.
It was already a disappointing senior year for Williams. And it was about to get a lot worse.
Bullets fly
Shortly before midnight on March 27, a white Tesla with six people inside headed up a narrow road deep in the hills of unincorporated East San Diego County. The driver parked in front of a lavish home with five acres of land, an infinity-edged pool, a rock waterfall and a tennis court.
Williams has co-owned this 3,700-square-foot house since August 2022, a few months after his 18th birthday. He was living there, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, as was his San Ysidro teammate, Taylor, a native of Chicago.
The occupants of the Tesla allegedly came to Williams’ house that night because one of them was dating Taylor. The teenage girl testified during an October pretrial hearing that Williams appeared “shocked” that they were there and began issuing threats.
“He said we better get to stepping or we’re going to leave with bullet holes,” the girl added.
Williams claimed he was going to get his gun and then disappeared into his house, multiple witnesses testified. None of the witnesses said they saw Williams fire his gun, though some said they saw him emerge from the house with a gun in hand as they were driving away. Photos introduced into evidence by the prosecution at the pretrial hearing show the Tesla with bullet holes to the trunk and back windshield.
The San Diego County Sheriff's Department began investigating the incident the next day and arrested Williams on April 13. When sheriffs searched Williams’ house, they did not locate a gun matching the one used in the incident, but they did find multiple others, detective Bradley Farr testified at the preliminary hearing. Among those, Farr said, was a handgun on the nightstand in Williams’ bedroom with a loaded magazine next to it.
Neither of Williams’ defense attorneys returned messages from Yahoo Sports seeking comment. Attorney Troy P. Owens noted at the preliminary hearing that there was no direct evidence that Williams fired a gun. Any shots fired could have been in “self defense,” Owens argued, since Williams’ accusers came to his house uninvited and didn’t immediately leave when asked.
Defense attorneys will have to choose between arguing that Williams acted in self defense and that someone else did the shooting, Hashemi said.
If Williams’ attorneys argue someone else did the shooting, Hashemi expects them to highlight the lack of direct evidence linking Williams to the shootings and try to discredit the credibility of the witnesses. If Williams’ attorneys claim self defense, Hashemi said the burden of proof shifts to them and they’ll have to show that he had reason to suspect that he was in danger.
“Unless there’s something we don’t know about, I don’t see how shooting at a car that’s driving away from you is considered self defense,” Hashemi said. “If it’s not a clear self-defense case, I don’t think that’s a tactic his attorneys will want to use.”
Williams may have only dug himself a deeper hole last month with his response to a San Diego County judge ruling that his case could proceed to trial. He posted a TV news clip from the hearing to Instagram with the caption "Say Da Judge n D/A fw his head just stay a float.” The actual lyric is “Say the judge and DA f****n' with his head, just stay afloat.” It’s from rapper Rylo Rodriguez’s song, “Ah Never Be the Same,” which discusses shooting, killing, loyalty and betrayal.
The since-deleted Instagram post was part of district attorney George Modlin’s argument last Friday to increase Williams’ bail from $50,000 to $500,000. According to an Associated Press report, Judge Kathleen Lewis declined to raise Williams’ bail but ordered him to make no more social media posts about his case.
“I think it was just a stupid, stupid thing Mr. Williams did," Lewis said.
While Williams will have a chance to refute the accusations against him during his trial, many of the companies who once signed him to endorsement deals have since severed ties with him. A spokesperson for Puma confirmed to Yahoo Sports that its landmark NIL deal with Williams has "ended.” LaceClips CEO Jonathan Nussbaum wasn’t quite so diplomatic.
Hoping to take advantage of Williams’ vast following among kids and teens, Nussbaum hired him in 2021 and agreed to pay him up to $200,000 per year to promote LaceClips’ wearable sports tech to a young audience. Nussbaum said he fired Williams immediately after the arrest, but Williams “was already in breach of contract” long before that.
“He basically did nothing that he was asked to do for us other than coming to a photoshoot,” Nussbaum said. “He never did any of the social media he was supposed to do. He never wore the device he was supposed to. He didn’t seem like he cared.”
While Williams’ arrest also further dims his hopes of carving out an NBA career, the reality is he was already on the periphery. NBA scouts said it was hard to see a franchise investing even a second-round draft pick or a two-way contract on an undersized, volume-based scoring guard. As one NBA scout put it, “We hadn’t done a whole lot of intel on him even before the arrest because we didn’t think it was worth it. We’d rather dig into a prospect who has a real chance.”
How is Williams coping with his endorsements drying up, his basketball career on hold and his freedom in jeopardy? Business as usual, his trainer insists.
The day after Williams’ arrest, he and Razooky went right back to work.
“He and my mom prayed together,” Razooky said, “and then we worked out.”
Despite the many hours they spend together each week, Razooky said that he hasn’t spoken with Williams directly about the felony charges against him or his upcoming trial.
“Hey, you doing OK?” Razooky will ask.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Williams usually answers.
Then they’ll dive right into that day’s skill work.
With his Dec. 14 trial looming, the question now is what they're working toward.
