Elizabeth and Mark Williams

ELIZABETH AND MARK WILLIAMS have been speaking this

moment into existence for a while. As Mark prepares for the NBA Draft and Elizabeth gets ready for her debut with the Washington Mystics, the siblings are finally living out their dreams, together.

W O R D S J A R E D E B A N K S

time she was 11, she’d fallen for the rhythm and beauty of the game while sending the ball out of bounds left and right at AAU tourneys. She started working with current Rutgers assistant Nadine Domond around that same time and by 13, she was putting down dunks with ease.

Years spent in the gym honing her bag with Domond culminated in a life-changing letter from one of the best programs in the country—a scholarship offer to join the Tennessee Lady Vols.

“It was like, Whoa, like, this is legit. Like, this is for real. And everything that we had talked about was kind of coming into fruition, ” Elizabeth tells SLAM on a late-April call from Turkey, where she’s playing for Fenerbahce Safiport.

When it came time for her college commitment, Elizabeth wanted 9-year-old Mark to be a part of the process. She knew that she didn’t want to take the traditional route of announcing her pick by selecting a hat, so she instructed her younger brother to wear a Duke shirt underneath his hoodie. After she said those six magic words, “The school I’m going to is… ” Mark would unzip his jacket to reveal the school of her choosing printed across his chest.

Both of them flash that signature grin as soon as the memory is refreshed in their minds.

“He was so excited to do it. He was like, Yes, this is perfect! He was so hype, ” Elizabeth recalls. “And so, as soon as he stood up, his face lit up. And I was like, Yes. Because I just wanted that moment for him. ”

When it was Mark’s time to choose

his next destination after finishing up at IMG, where he was ranked as the nation’s sixth-best center, the outside pressure for him to follow his older sister was persistent, but E stayed neutral, pushing her brother to make the decision for him, for his game and his legacy. This was his journey.

“She didn’t do too much persuading, ” Mark says.

“She really let me try to figure it out on my own. ”

The likelihood of playing on the same court that your sister once dominated is slim to none. But Mark earned that reality as ESPN’s No. 32 overall ranked recruit in the Class of 2020 and a McDonald’s All American after years of seeing his older sis display the best ways to contribute to a team’s success. “Whether it’s scoring, whether it’s blocking shots, whether it’s rebounding, whatever it was, ” Mark adds.

Hooping under his sister’s retired jersey at Cameron for the past two years (Elizabeth played at Duke from 2011-15 and had her jersey raised in 2016), Mark brought the same defensive flair and