P&T interview with Jerome ‘Junkyard Dog’ Williams, Part 1

Know Your R.O.L.E.

Getty / Antonio Losada Illustration

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What does it take to become one of the most successful role players in NBA history? It begins with a clear understanding of your role. However, as Jerome Williams—one of the greatest role players in NBA history—explains, it goes much deeper. He built his nine-year career around the concept of R.O.L.E.: Relentless. Opportunistic. Leveraging. Everything.

Williams’s basketball journey reads like the dream so many young athletes envision. Upon graduating from Magruder High School in 1992, Williams found himself without a single scholarship offer, a consequence of his relatively modest 6-foot-2 stature—hardly the height that…