In case mediocre statistics were not a giveaway, Deron Williams’ body language provided a clue. Leadership was out of the question. It’s sort of tough to lead when you can’t walk up a flight of stairs or take the mascot off the dribble.
Welcome to Williams’ world, before the NBA All-Star break.
“I felt like I was hurting the team just being out there playing the way I was,” Williams, who spent the first half of the season suffering through pain in both ankles, said yesterday after the Nets practiced for tonight’s game against Atlanta — a key meeting with possible playoff seeding implications and the final game before the longest road trip in team history, an eight-game, 17-day odyssey.
“I couldn’t move, I couldn’t stay in front of anybody, I couldn’t beat anybody off the dribble, I couldn’t jump,” said Williams, who had a platelet-rich plasma procedure and three sets of cortisone shots, the last coming before the All-Star Game. “If I did find some energy or no pain to do one move, by the time I did [that] it hurt so bad I couldn’t even jump to shoot a layup. It was just painful.”
Ditto the results. Prior to the All-Star Game, in 50 outings, Williams averaged 16.7 points, shot 41.3 percent from the field and 34.7 percent from 3-point range. In the 12 games since the break, Williams has experienced a rebirth, averaging 23.3 points and shooting 46.7 percent and 47.1 percent on 3-pointers. Those are the numbers of a leader, an All-Star, a guy who signed a max contract.
“At the beginning of the season when I was playing bad it was hard … not [to] be down on myself. Keith [Bogans] was telling me all the time, ‘You’re being too hard on yourself.’
“I felt like I’m letting people down letting my team down, letting fans down if I’m playing bad.”
Well, he was.
“It wasn’t not trying to be a leader, it was just staying positive about myself,” Williams said. “My teammates know I’m not healthy and then they see me kind of being down. I’m not down on them, I’m down on myself.”
Williams said there was no pressure of living up to his five-year, $98 million max contract signed last summer or complying with his status in the organization.
“I was still trying to be positive to everybody,” Williams said. “It was more my body language on the court was …”
Rotten? Yeah, go with rotten.
“I couldn’t do what I wanted. I heard people say I looked disinterested,” Williams said. “ I’m not disinterested. I never tanked, never wanted to play bad, never wanted to miss shots. I just couldn’t make shots and I had to hear about it every day from you guys [media].
“Walking from here [inside the practice facility] to that locker room felt like [garbage]. What do you need to understand? I could not walk. I could not walk up my stairs without it killing me. It would take 10 minutes to get up my stairs sometimes. … I feel I have a whole new energy.”
The key, Williams said, was the treatment after the Spurs’ Tony Parker tore him to shreds on Feb. 10. Parker scored 29 points, made 12 of 21 shots, had 11 assists, went wherever he wanted. Williams had 15 points, three assists, shot 5-of-11 and showed the mobility of a telephone pole.
“That San Antonio game was the last straw,” he claimed.
* The Nets recalled Toko Shengelia and Tyshawn Taylor from their latest jaunt to the D-League. … Though the Nets technically will be on road for 17 days after tonight, they come home for three days before the last game of the trip in Cleveland. They had two eight-game trips previously, in 1977-78 (1-7) and in 1978-79 (3-5), both 12-day trips. In 1976-77, they were away for 16 days (2-5).