Living with Kemba Walker, Grant Williams is mentoring youth virtually

Boston Celtics rookie Grant Williams has been mentoring teens virtually while holed up with Kemba Walker in Charlotte during the quarantine.

Boston Celtics rookie forward Grant Williams is mentoring youth online during the quarantine, and he’s doing it from Kemba Walker’s house.

While the former UConn standout is from the northeast, he played the entirety of his pro career with the Charlotte Hornets up until this season when he joined the Celtics.

That just so happens to be Williams’ home town, and the Tennessee product has been taking his cue from the former Husky on being a mentee to others after having been the beneficiary of mentorship himself for many years.

The former Vol is now mentoring a half-dozen teens from the greater Boston area, and as might be expected, they are already planning for how they’ll meet in a less virtual way once the quarantine is lifted.

“They all want to go bowling when I get back to Boston,” explained Williams via the Undefeated’s Marc Spears.

“I really just loved mentorship as a whole,” the 21-year-old said.

“I have seen guys around the league doing it. I saw Kemba doing it with the Boys & Girls Club in Charlotte. When we played in Charlotte, he had 10 to 12 kids in the stands that he had been talking to and had touched their lives growing up.”

“I wanted to do a similar thing, but in Boston and other communities,” he added.

Through his agent, Williams linked up with MENTOR, an organization designed to pair mentors with mentees the NBA has had ties with since 2014, and MENTOR linked the Charlotte native up with six Boston-area teens.

Some of them were earnestly shocked to meet the young Celtics star, even virtually. “Is that really Grant Williams?” asked one.

“I remember that each kid was pretty nervous or not really able to speak,” noted the Celtics rookie.

“I had to stress to them the importance of being on time as well as being engaged, because some would just look around and not really pay much attention to the call or not have questions to ask. So, that first meeting kind of just established an identity for each kid.”

As time went by and they had more virtual meetings, a real bond formed with the group. Williams and the teens shared aspects of their life history that impacted them significantly, and not all of it was easy to hear.

But sharing such intimate details of their lives helped them learn about each other and grow closer — and gave Williams an opportunity to share the wisdom he’s learned from his own, similarly difficult moments in his own life.

“We’ve been doing this for four weeks and have learned a lot about each other,” Williams related. “Guys are following each other on Instagram. Hopefully, we will connect as they progress through the years, because they’re only freshmen right now.”

When his quarantine roommate Kemba Walker called on us to check in on our mentees back in April, few knew he’d already converted Williams to his cause.

But in moments like this — never mind in our usual, day-to-day difficulties — the bonds such volunteering can create are exactly what is needed to help create a point of stability amidst the chaos swirling all about us.

And, one day in the future, may provide the foundation for a more stable future so that those mentees can in turn mentor others — just as happened with Williams.

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