Remember When... Corey Williams was named NBL MVP

The loss of Corey Williams means the NBL has lost a titan of the league, and one of its greatest commentators, personalities and international advocates. As the years pass there will be no forgetting the immense impact he had on the competition after the culmination of his career, nor the success he encountered whilst playing on our shores.

Australia was the ninth country Williams landed in during his globe-trotting career, and was not the last. The New York streetballer established himself as a top talent in the competition with a pair of All-NBL Second Team nominations in 2008 and 2009, but he elevated himself into the pantheon of NBL greats with a stellar, MVP-winning 2009-2010 campaign.

The Crocodiles had formed a reputation as an ‘almost’ team in Williams’ first two seasons at the club. He, alongside John Rillie and under the leadership of Trevor Gleeson, helped pull the side to a pair of fifth place finishes, including a semi-final defeat to eventual champions South Dragons in 2009.

Star guard Rillie departed the club for the New Zealand Breakers following the 2009 season, and despite Williams being the only player on the roster to average more than 11 points per game across the season, he led the side to its best regular season finish since 2001.

His 18.4 points per game were the second most in the NBL regular season behind former league MVP Kirk Penney, and only center Adam Ballinger had a superior field goal percentage than Williams of the top ten scorers in the competition.

Townsville’s third-place finish came in one of the tightest regular seasons in NBL history. The Crocodiles ended the campaign as one of three teams with a 16-12 record, while the first-placed Wildcats won just one more game than the Crocodiles, Hawks and Blaze. The Breakers missed finals with a 15-13 record in fifth place.

Statistically, that MVP-winning campaign was not the most outstanding of Williams’ tenure with the Crocodiles, but his status as the leading light in an underdog, small market club helped establish him as one of the most important players to any team in the competition.

His 37-point outburst against fellow Finals chasers Gold Coast in Round 4 is absolutely worth highlighting as the greatest individual performance of Homicide’s NBL tenure – let alone his MVP season. He shot more than 72 per cent from the field and added seven rebounds and four assists with zero turnovers against one of the best teams in the competition.

That being said, his career-high 41 points against Brisbane in his debut campaign with the club is equally as incredible.

He almost dragged is side to victory over Melbourne with 29 points in a one-point defeat, and surpassed the 25-point mark a total of seven times in a season in which some of the NBL’s greatest ever scorers struggled to consistently put up big numbers.

Williams' style of play is reminiscent of a now bygone era of guard play. His background as a streetballer saw him prioritise a tough, physical game in which he thrived at getting to the basket and finishing through contact. In fact, he only attempted nine three-pointers for his entire MVP season, and never shot more than two in a game.

His and Townsville’s incredible season was eventually brought to a screeching halt by the Wollongong Hawks in the semi-finals, in a Game 3 clash where Mat Campbell, Rhys Martin and Cam Tragardh combined to take the series 2-1 at home.

In a game where Martin was the victor’s top-scorer with 16 points, Williams had 27 to mark a fond farewell to the club.

In an episode of Mastering the Pivot, Williams said he was prouder of leading Townsville to multiple post-season appearances than he was of his MVP crown.

“This was Townsville, not Sydney, not Melbourne, not Brisbane, not Adelaide, not Perth. It’s the ‘Ville,” Williams said.

“I wore it like a badge of honour when we went out there to compete against anybody let alone those top cities.

“I didn’t expect to just want to come in and go for MVP. That’s never any true competitor’s focus. You get it, you get it. Cool. If not, you want the chip, and if anything, you want the Grand Final MVP.

“I was prouder of leading a team of underdogs that close to getting to a Grand Final and that’s the power of home court advantage. You can’t tell me if we had Game 3 at home we would not have gone to the Grand Final.

“I’m truly grateful for what we accomplished, and we made the town proud.

“If anything, it solidified and stamped me as a legitimate professional athlete. I fought a stigma for a long time in my life that I was just a streetballer.

“What are you going to say now I was MVP of a professional basketball league? Without knowing it I needed that to solidify myself as not only a streetballer but as a legitimate professional basketball player.”

That 27-point performance was Williams’ last in a Crocodiles uniform. He linked up with an in-flux Melbourne Tigers five games into the 2010-11 season, and marked his final season in the NBL with another All-NBL nomination.

His three All-NBL Second Team appearances sandwiched that remarkable 2010 campaign though, where one of the league’s biggest personalities endured a perfect storm of right time and right place to mark his name down in the annals of NBL history.

The Crocodiles fell out of the competition just six years after Williams’ departure from the competition, which means he will likely forever be just one of three players to have been named NBL MVP whilst plying his trade at the club, alongside Robert Rose (2001) and Brian Conklin (2015).

When all is said and done, though, there will never be another player quite like Corey Williams.