Jay Williams on ESPN: ‘You Can Never Really Be Your F------ Self’

Jay Williams is nearing the end of his contract at ESPN, and new comments call into question whether he’ll return to the network.

However, as the network undergoes changes and massive cutbacks, the NBA analyst is not pleased with the state of the company. In a recent appearance on the Pat Bev Podcast with Rone, Williams stated his frustration about not being able to be his authentic self at the network as well as working in a hot take media landscape.

“You can never really be your f------ self,” Williams said. “I don’t care if you’re Stephen A. Smith; I don’t care if you’re my boy Alan Hahn or Max Kellerman. We can sit up here and do the tit-for-tat, play the innuendos, let me give you a tease. … I get how the media industry works and I get how those are cliffhangers, which social media feeds on and articles feed on. It feels like media cannibalizing media right now. And I get how that game is played, but sometimes that game gets boring to me, dog.”

Williams was the No. 2 pick in the 2002 NBA draft. However, after retiring from the league in November ’06, the former Duke star joined ESPN as a college basketball analyst.

In 2019, Williams moved over to the network’s NBA team to work as an analyst.