SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — There was a look on young Cody Williams’ face that his mother will never forget. This would have been when Cody was 6, maybe 7. It often came on the basketball courts at Arizona’s Luke Air Force Base, where the family spent their Saturdays. Cody, big sister Jasmine and big brother Jalen are the children of Nicole and Ron Williams, who met while serving in the military in the early 1990s. Nicole was in the Air Force for 13 years, Ron held active duty for 24.
On those bustling Saturdays on the base, the family would bounce from the gym to the basketball courts to the bowling alley before streaming the aisles of the commissary, shopping for groceries.
“It was pretty fun. A lot of memories,” Nicole said. You can practically feel the beam of her smile over the phone. As she remembers the bigger things, some smaller moments — that look on Cody’s face — indelibly resurface. Cody and Jalen’s fraternal bond was nurtured by sports, basketball most of all. Jalen, who is three and a half years older than Cody and one of the better young players in the NBA, was already taking to hoops in a serious way before middle school. Sure enough, little bro wanted to be like that. So, Cody watched Jalen with deep intent.
“He soaked it in. He looked up to his brother, admired him,” Nicole said.
That’s how this story started. But as Cody got bigger, his look shifted. Where he once wanted to be like his brother, he soon wished to be better, and in his own way. Cody said that by the time he was 10, something shifted in his perspective. Jalen remembers it the same way.
“He caught on to everything twice as fast as I did when I was his age,” Jalen said.
Ron and Nicole saw how their boys would feed off each other, constantly in challenge mode. Cody with that look: watching, learning, plotting.
“It was always competitive,” Cody said. “When I was younger, like when I was really young, it [felt…
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