On June 7, 2010, Monty Williams was appointed head coach of the New Orleans Hornets. It is Williams’ first stint as a head coach, having spent the previous five seasons as an assistant coach for the Portland Trail Blazers. As of the date hired, Williams became the youngest head coach in the NBA at 38 years old.
Williams is considered one of the promising young coaches in the NBA. Trail Blazers Head Coach Nate McMillan charged Williams with running the team’s 2007 and 2008 entries into the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. The two teams featured young Trail Blazers prospects Greg Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, Petteri Koponen, Jerryd Bayless and Nicolas Batum.
During his time with the Trail Blazers, Williams spent a great deal of time working with Travis Outlaw and Martell Webster. He focused on consistency, instilling intensity and purpose every day in practice, as well as in games. Before being traded to the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2009-10 season, Outlaw increased his scoring and rebounding average twice in four seasons during Williams’ tenure. Webster and Williams both entered their first season with the Trail Blazers in 2005-06. Like Outlaw, Webster saw numerous improvements in a number of statistical categories, including points, rebounds per game, and field-goal percentage.
Prior to joining the Trail Blazers, he won an NBA Championship as a coaching staff intern with the San Antonio Spurs in 2004-05, and during the summer of 2005, coached the Spurs’ Summer League entry in the Rocky Mountain Revue.
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He was an honorable mention All-American at Notre Dame after averaging 22.4 points and 8.4 rebounds during his senior season. Williams was away from basketball for two years during college (from 1990 to 1992) after being diagnosed with hypertropic cardiomyopathy, a rare condition of thickened muscle between the chambers of the heart. He earned a degree from Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters, majoring in communications and theatre. In high school, he was a 4.0 student at Potomac High School in Oxon Hill,
Active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, he was involved with fellow NBA guard Charlie Ward in distributing shoes and athletic equipment to impoverished communities in South Africa. He and his wife, Ingrid, are the parents of five children.