MarShon Brooks won a Georgia state high school championship as a point guard, went to Providence to be a point guard and in the closing days of his rookie NBA season with the Nets, he is being re-united with his former position.
“It’s been a while. It’s been about three, four years,” said Brooks, who delivered 18 points, six assists and six rebounds in the Nets’ 110-98 mauling of the Wizards Friday night in Newark. “But I played it all my life, so I’m pretty comfortable. The main thing about playing point guard is when the little guys try to speed you, you just got to stay poised.
“With Anthony [Morrow] and [Gerald] Green out there, they make it pretty easy,” Brooks said. “Coach [Avery Johnson] doesn’t put me in too many bad situations. He helps me out a little bit, just sends them guys off screens, just make an easy pass. So it’s not as hard as it looks, but yeah, I’m pretty comfortable running the point.”
And that comfort led to some positive reviews.
“He played well,” Deron Williams said. “He looked good out there. He was passing the ball making the right plays. He looked really comfortable.”
And the guy whose opinion counts a lot — Johnson – also liked what he saw. And Brooks at point is something he wants to see for the future.
“MarShon did a good job, a better job of taking care of the ball,” Johnson said. “He had three turnovers in the first four minutes in our last game so we had to work on some pivot foot stuff, take him back into the lab this morning. And he did a nice job of making sure that he didn’t travel like he did in the last game. He played some backup point guard for us, that’s something we wanted to look at. It really gave us another dimension of being bigger and more athletic and that helped us out quite a bit.”
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The Nets other rookie, Jordan Williams, had his most impressive offensive game of the season. He made every shot (7-of-7) scored a personal best 14 points, blocked a shot and grabbed four rebounds.
“They were pretty good. I’ve been riding them quite a bit this year,” Johnson said of the rookies. “To have Jordan 7-for-7 from the field, all his shots looked good.”
Williams’ tale had been told repeatedly. He came to camp out of shape, suffered dehydration and basically began his NBA career in the doghouse. But now, in shape, he is contributing. And Friday night’s perfect showing from the floor helped his confidence.
“Any time you don’t miss, it definitely helps. It helps get the rhythm going,” Williams said. “My teammates have been doing a great job as well as the coaching staff in building my confidence up. For a rookie to be successful, you need both of those things.”
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The Nets had five players in double figures, plus Gerald Green scored nine points (two on a highlight reel dunk) and Kris Humphries scored eight. …. The Nets shot a season high .563 (45-of-80). … Green also had a season-high four assists, part of the Nets’ season-best 32 assists as a team. … Deron Williams registered his 19th double-double. … Anthony Morrow, who scored 17 points off the bench and shot 8-of-11, passed the 3,000 career point mark. … Gerald Wallace, with 19 points, surpassed the 9,000 career point mark. … Washington had five players in double figures, led by John Wall with 18 points.
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The Nets may have shot a season high, but the difference in producing four wins in the last six games, according to Wallace, occurs at the other end.
“Our defense has stepped up a whole lot,” Wallace said. “We’re talking to each other on defense, helping on defense, we’re rotating. We’re playing defense like a team.”
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Shelden Williams started at center after missing all four games of the road trip with a bruised retina and scratched cornea, courtesy of Tyler Hansbrough in the previous home game.
“As soon as it happened I looked down at my hand, I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I thought I lost my right eye,” Williams said. “I never had anything like that happen before. I got poked in the eye before but never where I Iooked down and couldn’t see out of my right eye.”
Williams played 21 minutes, made his only shot and grabbed four rebounds.
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It may have taken 57 games, but Johnson finally saw as complete a game as he saw all season from his Nets: good start, great shooting, solid defense.
“We really got off to a good start. Our guys were focused,” Johnson said. “The way we started tonight, we can go back and look over our history this season — we’ve gotten off to starts like the Wizards got off to tonight — we’ve been on the other end of it, is what I’m trying to say. It was good that we were on the positive end with a 13-point lead in the first quarter. But not only that, our body language was good, our guys were covering for each other on defense, and I think that set the tone for us the rest of the game, to help us build a 24-point lead.”
fred.kerber@nypost.com