Eric Williams

If you aren’t much into the NBA, you would most likely recognize Eric Williams from VH1’s “Basketball Wives.” While he’s taken quite a beating from his portrayal on the show, Eric says “I wasn’t a [cast member] on Basketball Wives, so when I came on I made guest appearances, and what you saw of me was real.  When I came to the table with my passion, everything I said was real, and you could never get that from a script.”

The 6’8” forward is now taking on a new reality show challenge. “Generation Next” will feature Williams and his son, along with several other fathers and sons and one mentor and teen who are ready to show the world how to deal with issues young African American males struggle with today.

Williams says he decided to participate in the show because he is a product of the mentoring of the show’s creator, Ernest Ruffin, Jr. Ruffin mentored Williams more than 20 years ago, and Williams credits him with being the positive influence he needed while growing up in the projects of Newark, NJ.

Revealing something that he rarely discusses,  Williams said, “In my junior year of college, I got poked in my left eye.  My central vision is gray, like a big gray spot.  I eluded all of the eye doctors in the NBA and hustled my way through.” Ruffin was there to support him every step of the way.

By publicly displaying his relationship with his son, Williams is hoping the show will serve as a “blueprint or format for single fathers,” who are struggling to raise young men in a world filled with “guns and bullets.”

“I thought we should do something to bring out the importance of fathers being in their lives and, in the absence of fathers, the role a mentor plays.”

As the father of a teenaged son, Williams has had to serve as mother and father since Eric Williams, Jr., lost his mother at the age of 9 years old.  “I have to play a lot of roles, so I can understand him on all the levels, mentally, that he’s going through.”

ECSMG, the show’s production company, is currently in talks to feature the series on www.bet.com. –suncera johnson

Suncera Johnson is a freelance writer, host of her blogtalk radio show, “Musings Of A Muse,” and founder of the “300 Steps to Greatness” initiative. You can follow her on Twitter under the pseudonym @thatwritingchic.