Why Billy McKinney Moved Home
Leaving basketball for a new calling
Billy McKinney (BS77) said there were two things he’d never do: return to his hometown of Zion, Illinois, and enter politics.
He’s done both, naturally, because McKinney, a former Northwestern basketball phenom and NBA executive, has a knack for going where he’s needed.
In addition to serving as mayor of Zion, where he lives in his modest childhood home, McKinney is chair of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a group of more than 175 US and Canadian cities and their mayors. The organization addresses a range of water equity issues, including urban flooding, access to clean and affordable drinking water, and community resilience to climate change in cities along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Basin.
“My time at Northwestern developed my game,” McKinney says, “but also developed me as a person with purpose.” With a degree in education, he imagined a future in business while also helping the community. But the NBA came calling, and he spent the next four decades as a player and then in executive positions for four league teams and another in the WNBA.
As a Wildcat, McKinney started 98 straight games, was the team’s MVP for three seasons, and scored double digits in every game of his senior season, when he was named All-Big Ten. His 1,900 career points stood as a school record for 35 years until another SESP student, John Shurna (BS12), surpassed it in 2012. McKinney was also the first African American to start on the Wildcats baseball team.
The Wildcats honored McKinney at the final basketball game of his college career by establishing the Billy McKinney Award, which is given annually to a student athlete who exemplifies his traits of leadership, total effort, and positive attitude. In 2022, the Northwestern men’s basketball program recognized McKinney as a hero. And now he’s back at Northwestern as part of the Wildcats WGN radio broadcast team, alongside Medill alumnus Dave Eanet, WGN Radio’s sports director and the voice of Northwestern football and basketball for decades.
Coming home
McKinney’s unexpected journey back to Zion began in 2012, while he was running the Milwaukee Bucks scouting department. After his mother died, he was soon rehabbing and living in his childhood home. By 2015, he had been appointed building commissioner of his hometown, which has had more than its share of property issues, including vacant buildings.
As commissioner, McKinney didn’t just sign off on housing inspections—he’d ride his bike to check out projects in person. He regularly connected with local businesses, firefighters, and police officers, and in 2019, he ran for mayor, winning with more than 63 percent of the vote.
Now McKinney is trying to increase outside investment in a city that has traditionally tried to be self-sustaining. And he is working to turn home renters into buyers, since home ownership is a primary way to build wealth. He has secured the longoverdue $15 million in annual payments as compensation for spent nuclear fuel rods that have sat on the Zion lakefront since a 257-acre power plant was shuttered in 1998.
Zion’s mayor is accessible—he doesn’t hide behind a velvet rope. McKinney credits the community with raising him when his family moved to the city in 1962. “The people of Zion directed me toward the path of proper education, respect for myself and others, and the road to success,” he said after winning the mayoral election.
“They invested in me and shaped me into the man I am today,” he says. “I still work in my yard, make the bed every day. I learned some important lessons here.”
–By Brian Cazeneuve