WASHINGTON — Logic and common sense are against it. But there’s always hope. So Deron Williams will not discount the possibility of playing for the Nets again this season.
The All-Star point guard will sit at least three games because of his strained right wrist, coach Avery Johnson announced yesterday. But Williams, maybe trying to convince himself, claimed “it’s a strong possibility” he will return before the season ends.
But that may merely be wishful thinking. Williams already has rested for a week-plus and is back at square one.
“I’m going to see how it feels, and who knows? I hate sitting out. It’s a strong possibility,” Williams said of returning this season after he aggravated his injury Friday in a fall at Milwaukee, noting the only solution is “rest, really. Every time I tweak it, it’s just like I’m going backwards.”
Williams was scratched from yesterday’s 98-92 loss to the depleted Wizards — a loss Johnson labeled “painful” considering the Nets blew a 17-point lead. Kris Humphries (18 points, 17 rebounds), Brook Lopez (21 points, 10 rebounds) and fill-in point guard Jordan Farmar (10 points, 17 assists) tallied double-doubles; rookie John Wall paced the Wizards with 26 points and eight assists.
Williams will miss tonight’s home game against the Pacers plus Wednesday’s game at Cleveland. He will be re-evaluated, and the Nets will reveal their findings Friday, when they are scheduled to play at Orlando.
With the playoffs a virtual impossibility — the Nets are seven games out with 14 to play and would need to pass the Pistons, Bucks, Bobcats and Pacers — sitting Williams the rest of the way would seem to make sense. Williams at least acknowledged the logic.
“The future is bright here and that’s what everybody is looking forward to, so there’s no reason,” Williams said. “I’m not saying we can’t make the playoffs, but it would be a stretch, [14] games left, [seven] games back. I don’t know if anybody’s ever done that before in the history of the league.”
Johnson, who met with general manager Billy King and his star guard here Saturday, stressed how Williams wants to play. But the team will not do anything to jeopardize the new face of the franchise, he said.
“He’s a guy who likes to play games,” Johnson said. “We just don’t like to see players play when they’re injured.
“He’s played injured and in pain. We just feel after talking to him, even though his emotions want to play, we just feel he’s in a little danger of playing these next three games. That’s why we’ll sit him out and evaluate him at the end of this week,” Johnson added.
“Sometimes you may think you can’t make it worse, but when you’re overcompensating and hesitating, strange things happen.”
Why not sit him for the rest of the season, with the playoffs so unlikely? Williams missed over a week after the Nets returned from London when his wife gave birth.
“Let me just say it like this: If we say we’re shutting him down for the rest of the year and he wants to play in a game and it feels great, then we have to go back on what we said,” Johnson explained. “So right now, three games.”
Williams concurred.
“You just don’t want to go and say ‘the season,’ and then I come back and play. And you say, ‘Well, you said the season . . .,’ ” said Williams, who originally strained a flexor tendon in his wrist in January while playing for Utah.
Doctors told him rest is the only cure and he needs up to a month off. In addition to obviously affecting his play — he has not shot 50 percent in any game for the Nets — he admits there is a mental burden.
“It’s real frustrating,” Williams said. “If it was my left wrist, it wouldn’t affect me. I could brace it more to where it won’t move. I wouldn’t be able to bend it back and forth and it wouldn’t be a problem. But since it’s my shooting hand, it’s just been a tough 2½ months.”