“What happened” to former Syracuse basketball star Michael Carter-Williams?
Carter-Williams, 32, also known as MCW, is opening up about the high expectations he faced after leading SU to the Final Four in 2013 and winning the 2014 NBA Rookie of the Year award. In a new essay for The Players Tribune, “What Happened To Michael Carter-Williams,” he reflects deeply on his time in Syracuse and offers some insight on where he is today.
“It felt larger than life. We punched our ticket to the Final Four, and the school was lit. This was Syracuse hoops in 2013. We were big,” Carter-Williams wrote. “There was a big, big block party on Castle Court that night. Everyone was down there. We were all hype. The music was blasting, but you could still hear people chanting and yelling over it all. Syracuse doesn’t have an NBA team, so their basketball at that time was like everything. It was like we were movie stars. On campus, people would mob and ask us to take pictures. People recognized you in town, everywhere you would go, and they would show you love.”
He said the “positive energy” helped guide him towards the NBA, where he was selected 11th overall in the 2013 draft by the Philadelphia 76ers. He averaged 16.7 points, 6.3 assists and 6.2 rebounds per game in his first season with Philly, eventually being crowned ROTY — which he said only “added pressure.”
Carter-Williams’ career soon faced multiple setbacks, largely due to injuries, that left him bouncing around the league with multiple teams, including the Orlando Magic, Houston Rockets, Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks. MCW said he especially clashed with then-Bucks coach Jason Kidd, struggled with depression and felt so nervous he would be “peeing 15 times throughout the day.”
“It started small, like this little voice in my head telling me I had to be perfect all the time,” Carter-Williams wrote. “Once I had that mindset, I was doomed. I was constantly second-guessing myself. I stopped believing in what I could do on the court.”
He said his lowest moment came off the court, when he “betrayed my best friend” while in Houston. His fiancée at the time, Tia, left Houston, with their six-month-old daughter. He was traded to the Bulls, then immediately waived, and found himself jobless, living in Airbnb and trying to coparent.
Carter-Williams said he started experiencing anxiety attacks. When he joined the Orlando Magic in 2019, he started therapy. He let go of the idea of being perfect, and started improving. He and Tia got back together, got married and had another child. He also started playing well with the Magic, until an ankle injury effectively ended his time in the NBA, save for a brief appearance at the end of the 2022-2023 season.
But Carter-Williams, who was at Syracuse University from 2011 to 2013, says he got his happy ending.
“My time as a basketball player has been so amazing. But that was never the whole story. When you have been through what I have, you start to appreciate all the details in the picture. I look around at my kids, at my wife, Tia, and I can see that this was the main story the whole time,” he wrote. “Now, for the first time in my life, I truly feel like the best is yet to come.”
