For three years, Marcus Williams has heard the whispers about him as a basketball player and a citizen: He slacked in the classroom, lacked integrity, seemed out of shape. The issues came like mileposts during his three years at Connecticut. He had academic problems as a freshman and legal problems last summer over the theft of laptop computers. Some questioned his effort and conditioning."
“I’ve been proving things all my life,” (Marcus) Williams said in a recent interview in Orlando, Fla., where the Nets played summer-league ball. “After the academic incident, I ended up one of the best point guards. After the laptop incident, I was the best point guard. So now, going on 22, I don’t think it’s a problem for me to prove anything else.”
“Now the ball is in your hands,” Williams recalled Calhoun saying. “He told me it was my job to lose. From then on, it was like, work, work, work.” Williams added: “It’s almost like a negative and a positive in the same thing. I know now, certain situations I can bounce back and come back stronger.”
"But according to the police, Williams’s teammate A. J. Price told them that the day before they tried to sell the laptops, he had heard the same friend tell Williams the computers were stolen. Williams then did the negotiating with the pawn-shop owners, according to an arrest warrant application by the university police."
"Price told the police that Williams said later the same day that he wanted to return the laptops to their owners. The comment came shortly after one of the computer owners confronted Williams publicly about a laptop. A day after Williams tried to sell the laptops, the police recovered two of them from Price’s dorm room. One was found on the reception desk in the Connecticut women’s basketball office. Williams returned the fourth laptop to a friend of the owner." New York Times
