Malik Williams (born August 26, 1998) is an American basketball player who last played for the

Toronto Raptors The Toronto Raptors are a Canadian professional basketball team based in Toronto. The Raptors compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. They play their home games a ...

of the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

(NBA). He played

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

for the

Louisville Cardinals The Louisville Cardinals (also known as the Cards) are the NCAA athletic teams representing the University of Louisville. The Cardinals teams play in the Atlantic Coast Conference, beginning in the 2014 season. While playing in the Big East Co ...

High school career

Williams played basketball for

R. Nelson Snider High School R. Nelson Snider High School is a secondary school in the Fort Wayne Community Schools system, serving the north central and northeast neighborhoods of Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. A small portion of New Haven is zoned to Snider. Ath ...

Fort Wayne, Indiana Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...

. As a senior, he averaged 21.5 points, 12.5 rebounds and four blocks per game, leading his team to its first

Summit Athletic Conference The Summit Athletic Conference, or SAC, is a high school athletic conference consisting of ten high schools located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Three of the schools are private; one being a Lutheran academy, and the other two being Catholic preparator ...

title since 2009. Williams was one of four finalists for the

Indiana Mr. Basketball The Indiana Mr. Basketball honor recognizes the top high school basketball player in the state of Indiana. The award is presented annually by ''The Indianapolis Star''. The first Indiana Mr. Basketball was George Crowe of Franklin High School in ...

award. He left as the program's all-time leader in rebounds and blocks.

Recruiting

Williams was considered a five-star

recruit __NOTOC__ Recruit can refer to: Military * Military recruitment * Recruit training, in the military * '' Rekrut'' (English: Recruit), a military recruit or low rank in German-speaking countries * Seaman recruit Books *''Le Réquisitionnaire'' (E ...

247Sports 247Sports is an American network of websites that focus mainly on athletic recruitment in college football and basketball. It is owned and operated by Paramount. The website hosts a large network of team-specific subsites, with each subsite b ...

and

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

, and a four-star recruit by

Rivals A rivalry is the state of two people or groups engaging in a lasting competitive relationship. Rivalry is the "against each other" spirit between two competing sides. The relationship itself may also be called "a rivalry", and each participant o ...

. On August 4, 2016, he committed to playing college basketball for

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

over offers from

Purdue Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

Michigan State Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It i ...

and

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

, among others.

College career

As a freshman at Louisville, Williams averaged 3.8 points and 2.4 rebounds per game. On January 6, 2019, he posted a career-high 19 points and 11 rebounds in a 90–73 win against Miami (Florida). Williams averaged 7.7 points and 6.1 rebounds per game as a sophomore. He missed the first four games of his junior season after undergoing surgery for a broken foot. As a junior, Williams averaged 8.5 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, and was the runner-up for

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Associa ...

Sixth Man of the Year. He was limited to three games in his senior season after reinjuring his foot twice. He returned to Louisville for his fifth season of eligibility, granted due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. On February 1, 2022, Williams was indefinitely suspended due to failing to uphold program standards, but was reinstated on February 7 after missing two games.

Professional career

Anwil Włocławek (2023)

After going undrafted in the

2022 NBA draft The 2022 NBA draft (branded as the 2022 NBA Draft presented by State Farm for sponsorship reasons), the 76th edition of the National Basketball Association's annual draft, was held on June 23, 2022, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The ...

, Williams signed with

Anwil Włocławek Anwil is a municipality in the district of Sissach in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. History Anwil is first mentioned in 1276. Geography Anwil has an area, , of . Of this area, or 63.6% is used for agricultural purposes, whil ...

of the

Polish Basketball League Polska Liga Koszykówki (PLK) (English language, English: Polish Basketball League) is a professional men's club basketball list of basketball leagues, league in Poland. It constitutes the first and highest-tier level of the Polish basketball leag ...

on January 1, 2023.

Sioux Falls Skyforce (2023–2024)

On October 30, Williams joined the

Sioux Falls Skyforce The Sioux Falls Skyforce are an American professional basketball team of the NBA G League based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and are affiliated with the Miami Heat. The team plays their home games in the Sanford Pentagon, a place they have call ...

, but was waived on November 8. Five days later, he re-joined the Skyforce where he played 33 games and averaged 11.1 points, 9.3 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 23.2 minutes.

Toronto Raptors (2024)

On April 3, 2024, Williams signed a 10-day contract with the

Career statistics

College

, - , style="text-align:left;", 2017–18 , style="text-align:left;",

, 32 , , 12 , , 10.6 , , .418 , , .323 , , .688 , , 2.4 , , .2 , , .4 , , .4 , , 3.8 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2018–19 , style="text-align:left;",

, 34 , , 20 , , 18.2 , , .420 , , .318 , , .701 , , 6.1 , , .3 , , .3 , , 1.2 , , 7.7 , - , style="text-align:left;", 2019–20 , style="text-align:left;",

, 26 , , 3 , , 18.7 , , .497 , , .290 , , .648 , , 6.1 , , .3 , , .5 , , .6 , , 8.5 , - , style="text-align:left;",

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

, style="text-align:left;",

, 3 , , 2 , , 20.7 , , .300 , , .286 , , .250 , , 6.0 , , 1.0 , , .7 , , .0 , , 5.0 , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:center;" colspan="2", Career , 95 , , 37 , , 15.8 , , .439 , , .314 , , .667 , , 4.9 , , .3 , , .4 , , .7 , , 6.5

Personal life

Williams wears the number 5 jersey and has a

tattoo A tattoo is a form of body modification made by inserting tattoo ink, dyes, and/or pigments, either indelible or temporary, into the dermis layer of the skin to form a design. Tattoo artists create these designs using several Process of tatt ...

on his right forearm to honor his friend and former R. Nelson Snider High School girls basketball player, Peytin Chamble, who died in a car accident at age 17.

References

External links

Louisville Cardinals bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Malik 1998 births Living people American expatriate basketball people in Canada American expatriate basketball people in Poland American men's basketball players Basketball players from Fort Wayne, Indiana Centers (basketball) KK Włocławek players Louisville Cardinals men's basketball players Power forwards Sioux Falls Skyforce players Toronto Raptors players Undrafted NBA players