Lou Williams’ trip to the strip club during a pandemic actually makes sense

Lou Williams made headlines when the Clippers guard was forced into quarantine in the NBA bubble after it was revealed he went to a strip club in Atlanta without notifying anyone, potentially causing a Covid-19 outbreak inside the league. After hearing Williams explain what happened, it actually makes sense, believe it or not.

Williams had approval to go to Atlanta for a family-emergency, the funeral of Paul G. Williams — a close friend of the family, and a man he considers a mentor throughout his life. On Tuesday night he spoke of the importance of the man to his life.

“I went somewhere after a viewing of somebody I considered a mentor, somebody I looked up to, first black man I seen with legal money in my life.”

Williams said he wasn’t thinking clearly when he left the funeral and went to get food at one of his favorite restaurants in Atlanta, “Magic City,” a strip club. Now, before you laugh at that last sentence (and trust me, I laughed too at the idea of the strip club being a premiere restaurant) their food does look pretty amazing.

Williams’ love of Magic City is more than just an excuse. It’s extremely well documented. Not only has he been espousing his love of their wings on social media for over a year, but he frequents the place so often that he even has his own sauce flavor there. If you ever want to eat like Lou Williams at a strip club, just get the “Louwill Lemon Pepper BBQ,” which sounds like it has a lot going on.

Of course, this was a dumb move. Williams acknowledges that now. He claims he just wasn’t thinking clearly when he decided to put himself at risk of contracting Covid to get some wings, but honestly, we’ve all been there after the death of a loved one. You don’t think clearly, there’s a certain devil-may-care nihilism that creeps in where you don’t care enough about personal safety, and you’re looking for personal comfort above all else. I lost my father-in-law this summer, so I get it — but of course this doesn’t explain why a dancer at Magic City claims she gave Williams a lap dance while he was there. That’s beyond the pale, and clearly a very dumb move. Thankfully he didn’t put the league in jeopardy due to his excursion.

“I truly was grieving two weeks ago. I was really going through something. I was thrown under the bus, you know what I’m saying? ... All the attention turned to Magic City because it’s a gentlemen’s club. I feel like if I was at a steakhouse or Hooters or whatever, it wouldn’t be half the story.”

Williams has a point here. There’s nothing inherently worse about going to a strip club than a restaurant, a casino, or any of the other places athletes have been traveling to during the pandemic — it just makes for more salacious headlines. Sex sells, and the only thing a Bloomin’ Onion turns on is the hardening of your arteries. At the end of the day we can evaluate Williams’ bad decision for what it was: Leaving the bubble and going anywhere with a crowd during the pandemic, without adding a layer of judgement on for where he went.

Ultimately, things went about as well as anyone could have hoped. Williams didn’t contract Covid, he didn’t spread it through the league — all he got was a 10-day quarantine when he returned to the bubble, where he used his time wisely.

“I was able to finish a couple of books. I did some crossword puzzles.”

Life is all about balance. Sometimes you need to read your books and do crosswords, sometimes you need wings from a strip club. The NBA dodged a considerable bullet, and Williams learned his lesson. It’s important for us to understand why he made a bad decision, and have compassion for someone dealing with grief in his own way.