Michael Carter-Williams, once thought to be a building block for the Process Sixers, is finding his place in life without basketball.
Michael Carter-Williams was here and gone in an instant. Long enough to be named Rookie of the Year. Long enough to pique our interest, to wonder what he might become. But not long enough to fully define himself as a basketball player.
As it turned out, injuries never really afforded him that opportunity across an NBA career that saw him suit up for nine seasons and play for five other teams besides the Sixers. He came and went before anyone could fully grasp who and what he was, something that took a toll on his mental health, as he wrote for the The Players’ Tribune in May 2024. And for the past several years he has sought to redefine himself — first and foremost as a person and a parent, as he emphasized in that piece.
Professionally, he has delved into broadcasting. And just to keep the competitive juices flowing, he is dabbling in boxing. He will face Sam Khatib in a three-round amateur bout May 29 at the Leman Ballroom in New York City, with all proceeds going to charity. Carter-Williams, a wiry 6-5, 190-pound point guard in his NBA days, will fight as a heavyweight.
He knows not where the sweet science will take him beyond that. He’s 33, so a professional career is probably out of the question. But he’s always been drawn to combat sports, and said in a recent phone interview that he’s keeping his options open.
“I’m kind of taking it and seeing where it leads me,” he said from his home in Winter Park, Fla. “I don’t know if the professional level is in the cards for me, but right now there are so many different avenues you can take with boxing, so I’m definitely going to keep working and explore all options.”
When he was growing up outside Boston, he and his stepfather, Zach Zegarowski, would take in UFC events. Zegarowski also said in a phone interview that Michael developed an interest in the career of Muhammad Ali.
“Muhammad Ali,” Zegarowski said, “is kind of like his idol.”
Not a surprise, considering Ali’s life and times.
“It’s who he was as a person, inside the ring and outside the ring,” MCW said. “The things he did outside the ring were unbelievable — how he brought people together, what he stood up for. And then obviously in the ring, just his career — how it went and the obstacles he overcame. Just his whole fighting style and of course his charisma.”
So he consumed every bit of fight footage, every interview. He found Ali’s use of the language “super entertaining,” his flair second to none.
“He’s an inspirational figure,” Carter-Williams said.
Midway through his NBA career, he began participating in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to keep himself in shape in the offseason, and when he was done playing in 2023, he gravitated back to that discipline.
“I was working out, just trying to run and lift, and I was like, eh — I wasn’t really scratching that itch, per se,” he said.
A friend suggested he participate in the May 29 event, and he has been training with an Orlando-based middleweight, Jeovanny Estela, for the last several weeks.
“The difference between being in shape and fighting shape is totally different,” Carter-Williams said. “And then some of the footwork is also different. So just kind of adapting to those two things has probably been the biggest challenge so far.”
But he feels he will be ready for his amateur debut, feels this is a worthwhile pursuit.
“He just needs something competitive,” Zegarowski said. “Basketball’s all done with, and he’s like, ‘I need to be competitive. I need something I can strive for.’”
Carter-Williams displayed a varied skillset (and unreliable jumper) at Syracuse. The Sixers made him the 11th pick of the 2013 draft, and his very first pro game was likely his best — a 22-point, 12-assist, nine-steal, seven-rebound performance as the Sixers, headed for a 19-63 finish, shocked LeBron James and the defending-champion Miami Heat, 114-110.
Carter-Williams also fashioned a triple-double against Orlando in his 15th game and generated a career-high 33 points in his 24th, against Cleveland. By season’s end his averages were 16.7 points and 6.2 rebounds, which would remain career bests, as well as 6.3 assists. His shooting splits — .405/.264/.703 — weren’t great, but he easily outdistanced Orlando’s Victor Oladipo in Rookie of the year voting, and appeared to be one of the building blocks for a team that was, well, Processing.
MCW came to believe that, too. As he told podcaster Ariel Helwani in 2023, general manager Sam Hinkie and coach Brett Brown included him in personnel discussions. Surely he was destined for a long stay in Philadelphia. Surely he would be around when the team rose back to prominence.
Only he wasn’t. The Sixers sent him to Milwaukee before the trade deadline his second season, in a three-team deal that also included Phoenix. The Sixers’ haul? A 2018 first-round pick that became (wait for it) Mikal Bridges.
Carter-Williams called the trade “a genuine shock” in his Players’ Tribune piece, and went further in the interview with Helwani.
“I definitely did feel betrayed,” he said.
In the recent phone interview, he said that he rued rushing back from shoulder surgery his second season.
“I don’t think I was in the best shape,” he said. “I was playing through some pain. … I wish I took a little bit more time to come back.”
Ill health would plague him the rest of his career. He underwent hip surgery in March 2016, another shoulder surgery in March 2018, and ankle surgery in August 2021 (as well as a follow-up procedure six months later). He also suffered a wrist injury and had knee problems so severe that he required plasma-rich platelet injections in both of them.
The last five years of his NBA career he appeared in just 108 of a possible 410 games, missing the entire ‘21-22 season and all but four games the following year. By then he was with Orlando, after stays not only in Philadelphia and Milwaukee but Chicago, Charlotte and Houston. His play never approached his first season, and as he put it in The Players’ Tribune piece, he reached “the lowest point in (his) life” in 2019, when he split with his then-fiancee Tia Shah, who fled with the couple’s daughter, Charleigh, to California.
While he declined to reveal the specifics behind the split, he wrote the following: “I betrayed my best friend. Seeing the hurt I caused my family hurt me so bad. Everything that happened next, I deserved.”
Soon after that the Rockets traded him to Chicago, and he was immediately cut. As a result he went into what he described as “deep depression,” something that was especially concerning, he wrote, since mental-health issues run in his family. (He noted that a grandmother committed suicide.) He would move to California in an attempt to reunite with Tia, only to begin suffering anxiety attacks.
In March 2019 he signed with the Magic, and began seeing a therapist. He also reconciled with his fiancee, and eventually they married and had a son, Rede.
In the piece he described his mental health as being “like a puzzle (he) had to piece together to unlock a better life.” And in the recent phone interview he said that he is “definitely in a better space mentally.”
“I’ve grown a lot in that aspect,” he added. “I’m definitely in a better place and continue to work on myself, and just continue to try to be better.”
Certainly writing the piece was therapeutic in and of itself.
“It was tough (to do),” he said, “but I really wanted to be authentic. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to inspire others to tell their story and kind of give a real glimpse of what it’s like being an athlete.”
Out of the game since a brief dalliance with a team in Mexico City in the fall of 2023, he has gravitated to broadcasting, latching on with the ACC Network as a studio host and game analyst in January of this year and doing some radio work for the Magic as well.
He’s not sure where that might lead, though he seems optimistic that something good is in the offing.
“I may have some other things that pop up on the horizon that I’m just waiting on,” he said. “But we’ll see.”
When he reflects on his playing career, he remembers his debut, which he called “unreal” and “the experience of a lifetime.” And overall he looks past the disappointments and the injuries and feels a sense of fulfillment.
“I feel blessed that I was able to play in the NBA for 10 years,” he said. “It’s helped me travel the world, meet so many different people, build so many different relationships. I feel blessed about it. I feel happy about it. There’s a dream that I was chasing since I was a kid, and I was able to fulfill that.”
He expressed a similar sentiment at the end of The Players’ Tribune piece, saying that his story had reached a happy ending. But really, it appears it is only beginning — that there are new chapters to be written, new tales to be told. And only then can we really define Michael Carter-Williams, once and for all.