High school basketball phenom Mikey Williams arrested on five felony gun charges
Mikey Williams #MikeyWilliams
Mikey Williams, the 18 year-old high school basketball phenom and Memphis commit, was arrested on gun charges Thursday afternoon and faces five felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon. He was released from San Diego County Jail on $50,000 bond just after midnight on early Friday morning, but is due back in court on April 20th.
If Mikey Williams is convicted, each of the gun charges would carry a minimum six month sentence in county jail.
A five star recruit, Williams was the the 26th rated player in his class and committed to play college basketball for Memphis and Penny Hardaway next season as the crown jewel of their highly regarded recruiting class (J.J. Taylor, Williams’ friend and high school basketball teammate, committed to Memphis to team up with Williams).
But beyond his on-court exploits, Williams has pioneered a path to turn high school sports stardom into bona fide celebrity status. Outside of Bronny James (who, coincidentally, is Mikey Williams’ close friend and former AAU teammate), no other high school athlete has ever reached this level of fame. Before his social media accounts were deactivated on Friday morning after his arrest, Mikey Williams had 3.8 million Instagram followers (only 25 active NBA players have more) and had racked up 321 million views on TikTok.
As such, Williams has built an impressive portfolio of sponsorships since NIL laws were relaxed in 2021. In fact, Williams became the first high school basketball to ever sign a deal with a global shoe company, inking a multi-year shoe deal with Puma in October 2021. While the terms of the deal were never disclosed, Williams hardly seemed strapped for cash. Just last summer, he bought a $1.2 million, 3,700 square-foot mansion in San Diego, which he then lived in with a teammate.
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