Huge rebound

Thanks in part to Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, his teammates with the ’85 Celtics, Williams is out of poverty — an existence all too common among former NBA players who outlived their basketball earnings.

No more waking up hungry in the night for Williams, a 56-year-old diabetic fearful of slipping into insulin shock. No more wondering whether anybody, most of all the NBA executives whose seats he once helped fill, cared about his plight.

“Things are getting better and better every day,’’ said Williams, once the toast of Broadway as captain of the New York Knicks, now the newest employee of the city recreation department in his native Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Williams is one of many professional athletes who fell on hard times after leaving the game. Among NBA retirees alone, dozens have turned to the courts for bankruptcy protection, including Williams and his brother, Gus, a former All-Star and NBA champion.

“Everything can fall apart pretty quickly,’’ McHale said. “Life has a way of sneaking up on you.’’

Soon after the Globe reported Williams’s crisis last year, offers of help poured in, with Bird the first NBA alumnus to reach out. As teammates during Boston’s drive to the ’85 NBA Finals, Bird and Williams occasionally played one-on-one after practice.

“Larry was a good guy to me back then, very down-to-earth,’’ Williams said. “We got along real good.’’

They lost touch through the years, but Bird wasted no time opening his checkbook and mobilizing his financial advisers to help his former teammate. Bird insisted to Williams that he wanted no publicity for his generosity, and he declined an interview request for this story.

Within days of Bird contacting Williams, McHale stepped up, too. McHale and Williams first met in 1976 as teammates at the University of Minnesota, McHale joining the Golden Gophers as the state’s Mr. Basketball from Hibbing High School, Williams having arrived earlier from the streets of Mount Vernon, a basketball hotbed abutting the Bronx.

“Ray was three years older than me, but he took me under his wing,’’ recalled McHale, who was 18 at the time. “He’s a wonderful man.’’