He Saw. He Believed. Now He Can Be an N.B.A. Star.

‘Places where people can’t see’

Williams grew up in Norfolk, Va., the youngest of three children. His mother, Margaret, was a nurse, and his father, Alex, is a gastroenterologist. Mark went to golf camp as a child. He played tennis for a summer. He dominated flag football for a while. No sport held his imagination like basketball did.

Mark was almost 10 years old and already nearing 6 feet tall when he started shadowing his older sister Elizabeth, who at 17 was a basketball star in Virginia. She trained with Nadine Domond, a former W.N.B.A. player, who is an assistant coach for Rutgers’ women’s basketball team. Domond indulged the curious younger brother by letting him box out and practice his footwork in the post.

“I’d be messing around looking, and she would teach me little tips and tricks,” Mark said.

Mark started to envision his own basketball future when he attended the McDonald’s All American Game for top high school players in Chicago in 2011. Elizabeth had been chosen for the girls’ team.

Mark surveyed the tall, young players on the boys’ team and asked one of them — the future eight-time N.B.A. All-Star Anthony Davis — to sign his basketball. He considered the path players such as Davis were taking toward the N.B.A. That’s what he wanted to do, too.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/sports/basketball/nba-draft-mark-williams-duke.html