Never Afraid
to take the last shot
Review: “Immensely entertaining while staying true to the life of Max Williams, the flashiest college basketball player I ever saw, and the man responsible for turning a field of broken dreams into a giant oilfield on the harsh, bleak farmsteads surroundings Giddings, Texas.”
Max Williams should not have been a great basketball player.
He was too short. He came from the small Texas town of Avoca. He had only twelve in his graduating class.
But nobody could stop him or slow him down.
Max Williams became the all-time scoring leader for Texas High Schools.
He was an All-American at SMU, a flashy passer, a deadly shooter.
Max Williams should have not even been in the oilfield. He had majored in insurance.
He had been a high-dollar player in Dallas commercial real estate, but the bottom fell out of the market.
He was dead broke when he gambled on oil exploration and ventured into the Austin chalk of Giddings, Texas.
He knew very little about the business, but he drilled on guts and on gumption alone.
Giddings was known as the field of broken dreams. Major companies had drilled in the chalk and left behind dry holes and empty pockets.
But Max Williams didn’t flinch.
He defied the dreaded Austin Chalk and developed the nation’s greatest and most profitable oilfield in half a century.
He was never afraid of adversity.
He was never afraid of failure.
All Max Williams ever wanted on the basketball court or in the Texas oilfield was a chance to take the last shot.