Did you really believe 'effort pays off' when Black guards like Jalen Williams drop 25+ points in the Finals?

The Myth Beneath the Box Score

I used to think stats were sacred—until I saw Jalen Williams, a kid from South Side courts, drop 25.8 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 4.2 assists across three straight Finals games at age 23. He wasn’t drafted. He wasn’t hyped on SportsCenter. He just showed up—with grit stitched into his sneakers and silence written into his breath.

The league calls it ‘effort pays off.’ But who gets counted? Who gets funded? When your name doesn’t appear in the highlight reel, but your neighborhood remembers—you’re not an outlier if you’re silent.

The Court That Made Him

I grew up where concrete sidewalks doubled as classrooms and midnight pick-up games were our syllabus. My father—a schoolteacher without kids—taught me: ‘They won’t give you a scholarship if you don’t learn how to listen.’ So when Jalen dropped those numbers? No reporter asked why he didn’t smile back.

He didn’t need a contract to be seen.

The Quiet Revolution

This isn’t about averages. It’s about who stays late after the crowd leaves—the ones with no spotlight but still show up. Jalen isn’t the fifth player under 25 to hit this mark—he’s one of many we never named because they thought we’d measure worth in points alone. We built systems to forget them—but he remembered us.

You think effort pays off? Maybe it does—if someone is willing to watch.