Ahead of the Game: The Pat Williams Story

by Pat Williams, James D. Denney

Covers the life and career of the Orlando Magic general manager and presents an insight into professional sports

Genres: Basketball

348 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Patrick Livingston Murphy Williams was an American sports executive, who served as senior vice president of the Orlando Magic. Williams began his career as a minor league baseball player, and later joined the front office of his team. In the late 1960s he moved into basketball, with his biggest achievements being the 1983 title of the Philadelphia 76'ers and being a partner in the creation of the Orlando Magic.

Reviews

[Michael Vincent]

This is a good read which describes the interesting life of Pat Williams. The way he responded to his first wife seemed a bit flippant (hard to know what was really going on) but, overall he seems to seek to honor God and live a life in sports and with his family that makes a difference. He expresses and teaches many leadership qualities throughout and shares ten helpful life rules in the epilogue.

[Tim Chavel]

Pat Williams is a very talented man and a very wise business man. The first book of his I read was coauthored by his first wife, Jill. The book, Rekindled: How to Keep the Warmth in Marriage was an excellent read on marriage. I was highly disappointed when I learned Pat and Jill was divoroced after they had written the book on marriage. Pat hits the divorce head on in this book giving the story of what happened between him and his wife. Reading between the lines I would say he had another lover, which was his job. This book basically is about Pat's life; I guess you could call it a biography. It has lots of good principles to live by. As one writeup of his life states, "Pat Williams is a basketball Hall-of-Famer, currently serving as co-founder and senior vice president of the NBA's Orlando Magic. As one of America's top motivational speakers, 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. Pat is also the author of over 80 books, his most recent title being COACH WOODEN'S GREATEST SECRET: The power of a lot of little things done well." If you enjoy sports and learning about the people involved you will enjoy this book. Below are a few quotes from this book:

But Veeck was more than just a stunt promoter. He was dead serious about fairness, freedom, and simple human decency. He broke the color barrier in the American League, signing Larry Doby to play for the Cleveland Indians in '47. He received a certain amount of hate mail for that decision, and he personally answered each letter. Typically, he would congratulate the bigoted letter-writers for their wisdom in having selected parents belonging to the majority race. But since not everyone was able to choose parentage and skin color, he continued, he was going to select his players on the basis of personal merit - whether a given player "happened to be black, or blue with pink polka dots.

[Vincent]

This book was ok. PRetty interesting guy in that raised 19 kids (4 of his own and 14 adopted.) Would love to read an interview with his first wife. I have a feeling that she may not feel that he is as great as he feels he is. Great line in the book about when they already had 11 kids and he wanted to adopted 4 brothers from the Phillipines and his wife was apprenhensive about it. He explained it by saying that "to be candid, I just wore her down until she finally said yes." Good stuuf. Could have been a much better book.

[Craig Kelley]

My friend gave me this book. He got if for free from the library. They didn't charge him a dollar. It was on the "free" pile. With the introduction I took the book with me to the beach. I never heard of Pat Williams nor did I care much about basketball. I'm a hockey fan! Anyway, I read it and was pleasantly surprised. Pat does a great job of weaving in championship highs and lows during his career. He's had an interesting and blessed life and he shares it well.

[Jackie]

Very interesting bio! (though I may be a little biased since it's Jimmy's dad.)