This is former basketball star Jayson Williams as you’ve never seen him before – standing at his multimillion-dollar New Jersey estate with one of his beloved shotguns.
And today, The Post can reveal the amazing gunplay secrets of the ex-Nets hero.
Williams, suspected of accidentally shooting and killing a limo driver, has seen a lifetime of guns and bullets. Once, he even nearly blew away New York Jet Wayne Chrebet by accident.
In addition to the near miss with Chrebet – which happened while target-shooting – he saw his father shoot a kid who had beaten up a young Jayson, and had a brother who shot another brother with a shotgun.
When he was a child, his mother also shot at his philandering father.
The violence is described in Williams’ memoirs, “Loose Balls,” which details hard drinking, fast living and wild times.
Williams, 33, now is being investigated in the Feb. 14 shotgun killing of Costas “Gus” Christofi, a 55-year-old limo driver who died in Williams’ mansion in Alexandria Township, N.J.
Christofi’s funeral was held yesterday in Piscataway, N.J., as a medical examiner ruled he had been shot at an “intermediate” distance by someone else.
Police believe that Williams was holding the 12-gauge shotgun when it fired, hitting Christofi, although they also think the shooting was accidental.
A prosecutor has not named the shooter, and Williams’ lawyer refuses to say whether his client was holding the gun.
“He was hit in the chest. It blew his heart out. It was a perfect shot,” said Chris Adams, Christofi’s nephew. “You don’t need to hold a gun giving a tour of your home, let alone a loaded shotgun … Why weren’t there any locks on that damn gun?”
Williams’ dad, E.J. Williams, a contractor, told The Post – “I don’t think my son did anything wrong.”
Williams has been careless with guns before, according to his book. The memoirs describe a day with friends, including Chrebet and New York Giant Jason Sehorn, target-shooting at Williams’ home.
“We were taking turns shooting the .50-caliber Desert Eagle, the most powerful handgun in the world,” Williams said in the book, co-written with Steve Friedman.
During his turn, Williams was distracted while firing.
“What I didn’t realize was that Wayne [Chrebet] was right in front of me, kneeling down to pick up one of the cartridges,” Williams wrote. “So when I fired the gun, it must have been just a few inches from Wayne’s face, ’cause the noise knocked him out cold.”
Sehorn ran in the house, and feared Williams’ friends would kill him to silence him if Chrebet died, Williams recounted in amusement.
Williams wrote that when he was 12, his mother, Barbara, grabbed dad E.J.’s gun and fired three shots into the bathroom where his father was showering, because he had cheated on her. His mother then chased his father with a butcher knife, he wrote.
Two years earlier, Williams beat a 19-year-old at pool, but the older boy wouldn’t pay the quarter bet, and hit Williams with a pool cue.
Williams said his father arrived and hit the older boy with a cue, and then shot the boy in the buttocks with a handgun.
On the next page, Williams tells of his brother Gregory shooting his other brother, Stacy, twice in the legs and back with a .410 shotgun after Stacy persisted in throwing high fastballs at Gregory’s head while playing baseball.
Elsewhere, Williams said his dad, as a young man, severely knifed someone who attacked him, and describes his grandfather wielding a shotgun to ward off men looking to retaliate.
And Williams recounts how he let former NBA player Darryl Dawkins pet his 150-pound Rottweiler Zeus before giving a command that caused the dog to grab Dawkins’ throat in his jaws.
Williams also told of confronting a man who assaulted his sister – who died from AIDS contracted in a blood transfusion she needed because of the attack – after the assailant was released from prison.
He beat the man bloody before a friend handed him a gun and said, “Finish him, Jay. Square things now for you and your sisters.” But Williams let the man run free after smacking him in the head with the gun.
Another time, at a bar near his home, a “redneck” followed him into the bathroom and accused Williams of having a gun.
“Well, of course I didn’t have a gun,” Williams wrote. But he told the man, “Wait for me here, because I’m going to go back out to the bar and shoot three or four rednecks. And then I’m gonna come back here and shoot you.”
Additional reporting by Steven Hirsch