Pat Williams (basketball)
Pat Williams is a senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, a motivational speaker and former minor league baseball player. Williams--born May 3, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania--was raised in Wilmington, Delaware.
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[edit] Baseball career
Pat spent seven years in the Philadelphia Phillies organization. The first two were as a catcher for the Miami Marlins when that was a minor league team in the Florida State League. Following that stint, Williams worked in the front office for five years. He also spent three years in the Minnesota Twins organization.
[edit] Basketball management
Since 1968, he has been affiliated with NBA teams in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia—including the 1983 World Champion 76ers--and now the Orlando Magic which he co-founded in 1986 and helped lead to the NBA Finals in 1995. Twenty-three of his teams have gone to the NBA playoffs and five have made the NBA Finals. In 1996, Pat was named as one of the 50 most influential people in NBA history by a national publication.
In his NBA career, he has traded Pete Maravich, traded for Julius Erving, Moses Malone, and Penny Hardaway, and won four NBA draft lotteries, including back-to-back winners in 1993 and 1994 and most recently in 2005. He also drafted Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney and Darryl Dawkins. Williams signed Billy Cunningham, Chuck Daly, and Matt Guokas to their first professional coaching contracts. Nineteen of his former players have become NBA head coaches.
[edit] Family
Pat and his wife, Ruth, are the parents of 19 children, including 14 adopted from four nations. Pat and his previous wife, Jill, were divorced in 1996.
[edit] Motivational speaker
Williams is also a motivational speaker. He has addressed thousands of executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and national associations to universities and nonprofits. Clients include AllState, American Express, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Disney, Honeywell, IBM, ING, Lockheed Martin, Nike, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Tyson Foods to name a few.
Williams is the author of over 70 books, including his latest title, "Leadership Excellence." He hosts three weekly radio shows broadcast in Orlando, FL.
Williams has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, The Wall Street Journal, Focus on the Family, New Man, The Maury Povich Show and Dr. Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power.
[edit] Fantasy camps
Every winter, he plays in Major League Fantasy Camps and has caught Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins, Rollie Fingers, Gaylord Perry, Phil Niekro, and Tom Seaver.
[edit] Education
Williams earned his bachelors degree at Wake Forest University, and his master’s degree at Indiana University. He has a doctorate in Humane Letters from Flagler College.
[edit] Awards
He is a member of the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame after catching for the Deacon baseball team, including the 1962 Atlantic Coast Conference Championship team. He was inducted into the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame in 2001. He won the DECA Entrepreneurial Spirit award at DECA's International Career Development Conference in 2011.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Don DeJardin |
Philadelphia 76ers General Manager 1974–1986 |
Succeeded by John Nash |
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