NOTHING BUT The Truth

Sporting News, The, March 15, 1999 by Gregg Doyel

"It was like I was in my back yard," Avery says, "trying not to let the ball get all muddy."

Avery was 8 when he launched the shot that tore the dm from that decaying backboard behind his grandmother's house. Avery contends it was no brick--"I made the shot," he says--but with the rim lying on the ground, it was time to move on. Avery found himself a spot a few blocks away, at a park where the grown-ups played.

"I was a natural scorer," he says. "Even then. I wasn't scared of anybody. I knew I could dribble, and I knew I could shoot."

The park was the place Avery learned how to shoot off the dribble, using his quickness to separate from bigger players, then shooting before they could recover. The park also was the place where he learned to keep his mouth shut, to defer to his elders, to get knocked flat by a moving screen, leave some serious epidermis on the pavement and get up quiet but ready for more.

Avery never has been a talker. Even at Westside High in Augusta, where he was dubbed "The Truth" by a local broadcaster as a ninth-grader and went on to score more than 1,900 points in three years, Avery was stone quiet on the court. He stayed that way at Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va., where he spent his senior season improving his academics to qualify for admission into Duke, and quiet he is to this day. One of the most assertive things he ever said came during his junior year of high school, when he visited Duke, was told by Krzyzewski he didn't have the academic work habits to get into school, walked out of Krzyzewski's office and told his mother, "I'm going to Duke."

"It's a big change from Wojo," junior forward Chris Carrawell says. "Wojo was a real take-charge guy, real vocal, and William is so quiet. Sometimes he goes an entire game and I won't hear his voice. But you know he's there, and he's making plenty of noise in his own way."

Nobody calls Avery "The Truth" any more, but he liked the Augusta handle so much he had it burned onto his right biceps. The tattoo almost blends into his arm, not jumping off his arm and into your eyes like teammate Corey Maggette's tattoo--a picture of a wizard spinning basketballs on his fingers. But that's Avery. What he does, even when it's something as overstated as a tattoo, he does in his understated way.

"People don't have to growl to be intense," Krzyzewski says. "William's had a great year, you know, and he wouldn't have had a great year if he weren't intense. Don't be fooled by his look. He's a terrific competitor."

The look can be misleading. Avery on the court often looks as if he could stop his dribble, pass to Brand for a dunk, and take a nap under the basket. To the other team, he gives nothing to build on, nothing to get fired up about, nothing at all. He doesn't say a word to an opposing player during a game, and he won't even look at one beforehand.

"I never look over there at them warming up, because if they see me look, they're thinking, `Oh, man, he's watching me, he's worrying about me.' So that guy gains confidence," Avery says. "Our whole team has that attitude. When we're warming up, we don't look at the other team. But if we find out they're looking at us, we're like, `They're not ready to play. We're going to crush them.'"