Nobody could have known at the time, but the foreshadowing of the NBA coronavirus pandemic plan was on an album in Florida.
In one of about 20 clippings albums in Reggie Williams’ den, there is a 1997 photo of Williams and former NBA commissioner David Stern standing on the midfield logo at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, which it was not yet open.
In the photo, Williams crops the same figure he had as a linebacker for 14 seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals. Williams remembers talking to Stern about the possibility that the NBA could play in the groundbreaking facility.
That vision is fully realized as the NBA resumes its season this week within the complex spanning over 225 acres. It is also another part of a post-athletic heritage that probably surpasses what Williams has done during his NFL career.
“The place was built on big dreams,” said 65-year-old Williams, who started working for Disney, who owned ESPN in 1993 and was vice president of Disney Sports Attractions when he retired in 2007.
As of this week, 22 NBA teams as a whole begin a reboot of the season in hopes of completing the aborted campaign by mid-October. They will stay there until the end of their seasons – practicing, playing and doing every other aspect of life at Walt Disney World Resort.
The dream for the sports complex arose from a unique nightmare.
Shortly after Williams’ football career after the 1989 season, he began to dream that the Bangladeshis would win Super Bowl XXIII after the 1988 season. In his sleep, Williams felt the confetti, the hugs, the thrill of victory. When he awoke, the anguished truth began to sink: the San Francisco 49ers were the ones who scored the winning touchdown in the game at the last minute.
As an NFL player, Williams’ only goal was to become a champion. He ended his time with the Bengali in 1989 feeling like a failure. Cincinnati went to two Super Bowls during his tenure and lost both.
But as he approached the end of his game days, he paved the way for his next chapter in life. He served on the Cincinnati city council from 1987 to 1989, which overlapped at the end of his career in the NFL. He was hired as general manager for the New York / New Jersey franchise in the World League of American Football, a position he held from 1989 until the league closed in 1993.
“This is all related to what I felt I had to prove after losing that second Super Bowl,” Williams said. “I needed to balance the rest of my life with incredible challenges.”
But the wheels that set him in motion to end up at Disney began when the NFL hired him for a philanthropy project ahead of the 1993 Super Bowl XXVII in Los Angeles. This led to the first NFL Youth Education Town in Compton, California, which opened less than a year after the Los Angeles riots resulting from the verdict in the Rodney King case. The YET also acts as a leisure center for young people in the area.
From compelling local gangs to preserve the new YET in Compton to involve United Way for its oversight, Williams has played a sizable role, according to Jim Steeg, a former NFL executive who hired Williams. When Williams was preparing to head for Disney, Steeg was aware of future challenges.
“Knowing what he was going to come across and being able to navigate was really taking something,” said Steeg. “And obviously he did.”
Not only did the scope of the Wide World of Sports Complex increase the degree of difficulty, but the complex was also located in the wetlands of Florida, which also meant construction challenges. Disney hired architect David M. Schwartz, who worked alongside Williams and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, to realize their vision.
“I am very happy,” said Schwartz. “I think it’s a real addition to Disney. I think he did what Disney wanted him to do.”
In 1997, the venue was completed and almost immediately lived up to aspirations during the design process. The first event was later that year – an exhibition baseball game between Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds. The buccaneers of Tampa Bay and Orlando Magic hosted numerous training camps. Many NBA players competed overall during their AAU youth careers.
“I deserve it for the originality, the determination, the hard work, the abuse it took to get through a project of that magnitude,” Bengali President Mike Brown told ESPN. “It is something he is justly proud of and something that even the Bangladeshis are proud of. We are proud that one of our boys has made his mark in his life.”
The NBA isn’t the only league that uses the facility during the pandemic. The Wide World of Sports Complex also hosts the MLS is Back tournament, testifying to the multisport functionality of the complex imagined by Williams.
Williams has suffered leg problems and various injuries that result from being an NFL player for 14 years: he has prostheses in both legs and has almost lost the right one due to severe bone disease. But he no longer has nightmares. And because of a post-NFL legacy that includes the Orlando sports complex, he never loses sleep over what he never accomplished with the Bengal.
“It makes up for the loss of a Super Bowl,” said Williams. “Really. The general idea of Wide World of Sports was to be able to compete at the highest levels in order to win and enjoy all that sweet success. But if you lose, you can still be in the happiest place on earth.”
.
