CLEVELAND — At various times, at various points of his tenure as an alleged basketball star in New Jersey and Brooklyn, these are just a few of the things Deron Williams has pined for, both publicly and privately:
- A coach he could trust.
- Teammates who were his basketball equals.
- Someone with whom he could share the burden of leadership.
Wednesday morning, when Williams awakens in his hotel room in Northeast Ohio, when he steps onto the Quicken Loans Arena floor in the evening for warm-ups and, later, to officially greet the new NBA season during a date with the Cavaliers, he’s going to feel just like a kid who pulled of a Christmas-morning parlay:
He got the train set AND the new bicycle AND the Xbox.
So this is the mission at hand for Deron Williams, franchise player: act the part. Take what you’ve been given and pay it forward. Understand the opportunity you’ve been granted by the Nets and their infinity-pocketed owner, seize it, prove you’ve been worth all the past agitation and aggravation.
“I’m excited. Who wouldn’t be excited about this team?” Williams said Tuesday afternoon. “We have a great group of guys, not only on the court, but in the locker room. We’re having a lot of fun playing together, being around each other. That’s all you can really ask for.”
Gone is Avery Johnson, gone is P.J. Carlesimo, and in their place is Jason Kidd, who has been both friend and mentor to Williams through the years. There is a lot about Kidd the Coach we don’t know, and won’t know for 60 or 70 games, but this much is certain: if one of the three greatest point guards in history can’t connect with Williams, nobody ever will.
Surrounding Williams is a deep cast of accomplished players, led by but not limited to Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, a vast array of Lopezes and Johnsons and Terrys and Livingstons and Kirilenkos, more than enough weapons to make any playmaker’s eyes widen and brighten.
And thanks to the presence of the ring kings, Garnett and Pierce, it isn’t even necessary for Williams to captain this ship, not in the vocal, proactive way most leaders do it, a role Williams has clearly been uncomfortable with. You could argue that to whom much is given much is expected, and you could argue that by giving him $98 million, the Nets have a right to expect accountability; instead, they absolved him of that, too.
Everything Patrick Ewing silently used to crave as a Knick during his decade-long pursuit of a title? The Nets gave all of it to Williams. You think Carmelo Anthony hasn’t taken notice of the soft landing Williams — who arrived in town a few days after Melo did — has received?
There’s only one problem with all of this, of course.
Now there are no alibis left for Williams. None. The Nets will go as far as Williams pushes them. Brook Lopez may well be able to post the team’s gaudiest numbers, but there’s no mistaking who their most important player is. And it’s up to Williams to play that way. Starting Wednesday night.
“I think a lot of guys last year, myself included, we would make excuses,” Williams admitted earlier in the preseason. “So that’s kind of our rule this year: No excuses.”
That’s a fine way to talk as Halloween approaches; it will be imperative it stays that way though Easter Sunday and beyond. It has always been a joy to watch Williams play when he is active and engaged, when his shot is falling and he’s breaking ankles off the dribble, when he’s feeding teammates for more dunks than a layup line. Even Anthony can’t match Williams as a show-stopper when both are at the top of their games.
But what we saw from Anthony last year is what we need to see from Williams this year. Challenged to be the engine to finally take the Knicks out of a 13-year morass, Melo turned in an MVP-level season, without anywhere near the bells and whistles Williams has at his disposal now. An old Nets coach named Don Casey used to put it this way: “You need your max-out players to do max-out things.”
That has to be Williams this year, or else he and the Nets might both be humming the same old tune: Be careful what you wish for.
Lest you get it.