I don’t know what you think Jayson Williams deserved, so I can’t tell you if he got it. All I can say is that if you think what happened to him is another example of athletes using their fame and money to buy themselves out of the consequences of their actions, you’re just wrong.

The jury probably got this one right. Costas “Gus” Cristofi died as the result of a tragic, stupid accident, and Williams is guilty of tampering with witnesses and evidence in an effort to cover up what happened.

He may go to prison and he may not. That’s up to New Jersey’s courts to decide, and New Jersey’s appointed judiciary isn’t known for being nice to people because they used to be famous basketball player and television analysts — or for any other reason.

And if you’re thinking that it’s an amazing country that can send Martha Stewart to prison for what was for a person of her wealth a penny-ante stock deal while a man who killed someone and then tried to make it look like suicide can get off without spending a day behind bars, go right ahead. It is amazing.

And to most of us, it defies reason and logic.

But the system is what it is, and it serves no purpose to debate it in this forum other than to point out the obvious: If you have tons of money to bestow on lawyers, you have a better shot at not ending up in jail that someone whose investment portfolio is a jar full of loose change and whose retirement plan is a $10 ticket on a nag that finished sixth in the fourth race at Belmont Park. On the other hand, even if you win, you lose a lot more.

Free video Williams verdict April 30: NBC's Rehema Ellis has the details in the Jayson Williams verdict, the NBA star was acquitted of aggravated manslaughter. MSNBC

So whether Williams goes to prison is beside the point. He’s already in a prison that he built with his actions, and it doesn’t have to have bars and guards to be terrible to imagine.

He has already lost most of what made his life enviable. His children, including a new one on the way, will grow up hearing whispers and giggles behind them, will hear other kids ask them if their dad is that drunken murderer, will always feel the stares and pointed fingers in the crowd.

Forget the career as a television announcer. Forget the invitations to go everywhere and anywhere, the free dinners and drinks and everything else that once was his. Forget the politicians who want to be seen with him.

Yes, he still has the big house with “Who Knew?” welded into the metalwork of the front gate, and he apparently still has enough money to be considered well-off. And he has the knowledge of how thoroughly he screwed up his life and that of his family.

And it’s a big family that doesn’t fit any of our favorite typical-athlete stereotypes. His father is an African-American; his mother a native Italian. They raised a houseful of kids, the father working hard as a mason and as the operator of a service station. When the kids grew up, they married partners from everywhere. “Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house,” he once told me, “is like the United Nations.”

He was not indulged as a child and he didn’t grow up on the streets. His father was tough with his kids, and the family grew up with religion and what the politicians like to call solid American family values.

As one of the youngest kids in the brood, Williams, who is exceptionally bright and clever, got attention by being the silly kid who made you laugh. As he grew up, he fueled his silly cells with alcohol — an ultimately lethal mixture, because when he drank, he would do anything.

He also told me, a couple of years before the fateful outing with the Globetrotters chauffeured by Gus Cristofi, that the turning point in his life took place in the parking lot of the building formerly known as Byrne Arena. After a Nets’ game, he and some buddies drank a lot of beer before leaving the building. In the parking lot, Williams was showing off a handgun he carried in the glove compartment of his car. One of his friends shot out a tire on a car belonging to one of the arena’s overnight crew. Williams was caught and, to protect his friend, took responsibility for firing the shot.

He said facing his parents after that was the worst he ever felt. And after that, for the first time he took his job and his life seriously, finally working at the game for which he had such talent and turning himself into one of the best defensive players in the NBA.

But the lesson didn’t stick, and that’s the tragedy. Williams had a chance to straighten himself out. He didn’t take it. He almost shot a friend in his back yard while showing off with a .50-caliber handgun — the most powerful handgun made. And, when injuries forced his retirement from the game, the drinking continued.

No one who knows Williams thinks that he intended to kill Cristofi. But everyone who knows him had to worry that some day he’d do something that would end in tragedy.

What makes it sadder is that the only reason Cristofi was in a position to die as the result of Williams’ recklessness was because Williams was such a nice guy, he couldn’t let the limo driver sit in his car while everyone else continued the party. He had to invite him in and show him around.

And he had to show off with one of America’s most impressive adult toys — a lethal weapon.

The cover-up was as amateurish and transparent as the terrified drunk who concocted it. It will all remain the one thing by which Williams is known.

That’s prison, folks. A man who was once the famous former athlete is now the drunk who shot the chauffeur and then tried to make it look as if the chauffeur shot himself.

Because of what he did, he deserves no less.

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