Corey “Homicide” Williams, who was a legend in the New York City streetball community, has died at 46 years old after a battle with colon cancer.
Williams had a long professional career in basketball, including stints in the NBA D-League (now called the G League) and the National Basketball League in Australia, where he once won MVP, after making a name for himself as a streetball basketball player.
“I went into it with a certain goal in mind. I didn’t necessarily want to win games, I wanted to turn heads. And I was going to do that through volume. You see, on the playground there’s no coach who will take you out for turning the ball over. It’s style over substance,” Williams wrote for The Players’ Tribune in 2016 as he chronicled his journey.
“So to build my rep, I put together a team of solid players who would give me the ball. And because it was my team, if I got the ball 30 times you better believe I was going to shoot it 30 times. And with that freedom, I started getting a lot of buckets. You could block my shot three or four times, but I wasn’t walking to the bench. You didn’t get off easy. I was going to come right the f–k back at you until I got mine.”
At first, Williams split time between the playground and playing professionally overseas.
“Slowly but surely, I started making a name for myself, and the offers started rolling in from professional teams. Now mind you, they were bulls–t offers, but that didn’t phase me. I mean if you’re living out of a garbage can, but that’s all you’re offered, what are you going to do?” Williams wrote.
“You make it work. At the same time, I knew I still needed to establish my rep in NYC. So I started splitting my time between whatever country would have me and the playground courts around the city. I’d be in Brazil during the fall, Stockholm in the spring, and then get right on back to New York to scratch names off my list.”
Williams’ biggest success came in the NBL, where he was the league MVP in 2010 as a member of the Townsville Crocodiles.
The NBL community is mourning Williams’ passing.
“Having Corey as part of the NBL commentary team was by far, one of the best decisions I ever made, and without his passion for the league and enthusiasm for the growth of the game in Australia, we simply wouldn’t be where we are today…,” NBL executive director Larry Kestelman said in a statement.
“There will never be another Corey ‘Homicide’ Williams, may he rest in peace.”
He was remembered as a mensch by ESPN NBL reporter Olgun Uluc.
“It’s a truly enormous, tragic loss for the Australian basketball community. The NBL doesn’t reach the heights of what it is today without his presence, on and off the court,” Uluc wrote on X.
“Losing Corey, the friend, is incredibly difficult. He impacted so many lives in a heap of ways, but I was very fortunate to see up close the extent to which he cared deeply for Australian basketball and the future of the NBL.
“The self-promotion and bombastic demeanor was, without question, who he was, but he also knew damn well the role it all played in promoting the game. He used himself as a vessel in an attempt to lift us all, in basketball and in life.
“His family should be so proud of the monumental legacy he leaves behind.”
