Holdahl: Mo Williams’ funny phone call with JJ Abrams
This Blazers team has gotten their fair share of under-the-radar publicity already this season and they’ve only played one game!
First, Dorell Wright acts in a music video with Chris Brown and now we find out Mo Williams is having phone calls with film director JJ Abrams.
Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com/forwardcenter.net followed up for more details from Williams after an Abrams interview published in the New York Times revealed that Abrams had a phone-call with the Blazers guard. It turned out the call was a simple case of mistaken identity.
Holdahl writes:
“Like most bipedal parents, we all discovered Harry Potter together, reading the books aloud to our kids,” said Abrams in an interview with The New York Times. “But one of my favorite children’s authors was introduced to us by our youngest son. When he was in kindergarten he brought home some books by Mo Willems, who has one of the most remarkable comedic voices I’ve ever read. His sense of humanity — of heart and generosity — is staggering. I was so blown away, I got his number from his agent and called him. I was essentially a sycophant, expressing what a deep fan of his I am, how I would love to work together one day. He was quiet on the phone, almost monosyllabic, disinterested. Frankly it was a bit of an odd reaction. It wasn’t until the next day that I discovered that I had, in error, called Mo Williams of the Portland Trail Blazers.”
An understandable mistake, seeing as how “Williams” is a rather common last name and is pronounced the same way as “Willems”. But that wasn’t where the confusion ended. According to Mo Williams the Portland Trail Blazer, he didn’t even know who he was conversing with until the article was brought to his attention by a yours truly after a recent practice.
“I didn’t know he did the “Star Trek” movies!” said Williams of Abrams. “He need to put me in a movie! Shoot, I can act. I do it all the time.”
Williams has a lot more great quotes throughout the whole article.
Erik Gundersen
Erik Gundersen is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for The Columbian. He's a graduate of the Allen School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in addition earning a degree in Spanish. He's covered the NBA for four seasons. You can also occasionally find his work on ESPN.com's NBA section for their TrueCities series. He also fist-bumped with Kanye West once. Follow @BlazerBanter on twitter for more Blazers and NBA news.