Donald "Slick" Watts
Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame
Basketball Player, 1969-79
Xavier/NBA
Inducted: 1996
Donald “Slick” Watts was a superstar at Xavier University (1970-73) who would go onto a standout NBA career.
A 6-foot-1, 175-pound guard, Watts averaged 18.3 points and 3.5 assists per game during a three-season career at Xavier for legendary coach Bob Hopkins.
“I practiced hard every day, and Coach Hopkins, was hard on me,” Watts remembered in a 2017 interview. “Like I’ve said, I was like Stephen Curry, I used to shoot. There wasn’t a shot in the world I couldn’t take. And 90 percent, I would make, but Hopkins didn’t play that, he was a coach. He broke me down and taught me how to play defense.”
The Mississippi native earned NAIA All-America honors as a junior and helped the Gold Rush post back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since the late 1930s.
“I fell in love with the school,” Watts said about getting to Xavier University in 1970. “It was the best time of my life.”
Xavier won NAIA District 30 championships during his junior and senior seasons and reached the NAIA national quarterfinals his senior year after a second-round upset of top-seeded and unbeaten Sam Houston State.
His career totals of 1,460 points and 331 assists were both school records when he completed his time at XULA; and they still remain among the program’s best numbers.
“When I was growing up in Mississippi, all we did was play hoop, hoop, hoop,” Watts said. “And take care of your business with your mom and schoolwork.”
Despite being undrafted out of college, Watts played six NBA seasons and led the league in assists, assists per game, steals and steals per game with Seattle in his third season (1975-76) en route to making the league’s All-Defensive team. He was the first NBA player to lead the league in assists and steals per game in the same season.
“That was a great season for me individually,” Watts said. “But more than anything, that was the season that got me traded in a way. That was a money season. I was trying to get that contract. I worked hard during the summer; I got prepared; and I got confidence in my game.
“I had a great year that year, and I made a mistake; I walked in and I asked Bill Russell [head coach] for one hundred thousand,” Watts said with a laugh. “He told me to get out of there or he’d send me to Haiti.”
That same year he was the second winner of the NBA’s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award for exemplary community service.
“It’s all about the words ‘human being,’” Watts said. “Nobody wants to be spit on; nobody wants to be rejected. That’s the way I roll, I tell my grandbaby, ‘All humans are beautiful; all people are beautiful; everybody’s just different, but we’re all beautiful. Maybe it had to do with when I lost my hair [due to an accident when he was 13 years old], I had to go through a process of being accepted, being teased. I had to learn to swallow all of that and be humble.
“I tell every kid, ‘You are the most important person in the world.’
“It’s all about your heart and treating everybody with respect. That’s what I always did. And it pays off. I still see people saying, ‘Slick, I remember you picking me up on your shoulders, man!’ or ‘You went to my school birthday party and you played one on 12!’ And now it’s really good, at 65 or 66, having a 45-year old man telling you that you’re his favorite. I get that a lot; and you can’t put a dollar on that.”
Watts played four and a half seasons with Seattle before being traded to the New Orleans Jazz in January of 1978, where he finished the season. He played one additional season with Houston before retiring in 1979 because of injuries. Over 437 NBA games, he averaged 8.9 points and ranks seventh in NBA career steals per game with 2.2 and 56th with 6.1 assists per game (through 2024-25).
Tim Booth from the Seattle Times wrote, “Known for his upbeat smile and approachable demeanor, Slick Watts ingrained himself in the Seattle community after his NBA career ended. He taught physical education in the Seattle school district, including a nearly 20-year stint at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in Rainier Valley before retiring in 2017. He coached hoops, started a foundation and ran a basketball academy with [his son] Donald.”
Watts, who was the first Xavier player inducted into the Louisiana Association of Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame (1991) and the 18th-leading vote-getter on the LABC All-Louisiana Team of the Century, was a member of the first XULA Athletic Hall of Fame class (2022). He was also selected for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame (2011).
He’s credited by NBA.com as the “first NBA player to turn a bald head into a fashion statement.” In 2004 ESPN ranked Watts 13th among the “coolest athletes of all time” and in 2007 he was named to the SuperSonics’ 16-member 40th-anniversary team.
He passed away on March 15, 2025, at the age of 73.
“Slick, out of all the players, Slick was Seattle. That was his thing was Seattle,” Hall of Famer and former teammate Spencer Haywood said following his passing.
“He always wore his green and gold proudly,” former Sonic James Donaldson said. “He epitomized the Seattle SuperSonics.”
Added another former Sonics teammate Jack Sikma: “He was always so giving and grateful to the community. He was a Seattle guy, a Seattle area guy. Always pleasant, always helpful and he lived his life well. (I’m) sorry to see him go. We’ll miss him, but he did good.”
2017 Slick Watts Interview with Rick DuPree from Rainer Avenue Radio:
https://www.mixcloud.com/RainierAvenueRadio/one-on-one-6/
