Longtime New York City streetball legend Corey "Homicide" Williams has died after a battle with colon cancer, the New York Post reported. He was 46.
A lot of people will tell you that Williams was among the greatest streetballers to never get to the NBA, his sizzle admittedly being more important than the steak.
"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.
"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."
"Slowly but surely, I started making a name for myself, and the offers started rolling in from professional teams," he wrote. "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 was named MVP of the Australian NBL in 2021. He then went on to serve as a television analyst for NBL
"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."
