DALLAS — Deron Williams returns home Wednesday night, both to the place where his basketball career began as a high school star and where he had the chance to return and spend his prime as a pro when the Mavericks battled with the Nets to sign him as an unrestricted free agent last summer.
But Williams passed up that opportunity to come home, and instead signed a five-year contract for nearly $100 million to remain a Net, something he expects his hometown fans to remember when he takes the floor against the Mavericks tonight.
“Usually I get cheers,” Williams said after scoring 31 points in 28 minutes in Monday’s blowout win in Detroit. “Now I’ll probably get booed.
“I don’t know why. I didn’t leave. I never said I was going to go there.”
Williams is right — he never said he would come home to pair with Dirk Nowitzki, and the Nets always were the heavy favorites to re-sign him, because of their ability to offer him an extra year and close to $30 million more in guaranteed money.
But if you have listened to Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in the weeks and months since Williams decided to stay in Brooklyn, perhaps the fans should instead stand and applaud him for choosing not to play for Cuban’s team.
“In hindsight, I don’t know if I would have been happy [if we’d signed him],” the always opinionated Mavericks owner said during a local radio interview last August, the first of a few times that he would touch on the subject and express a similar opinion. “I think we’re in better position now than we would’ve been if we’d gotten him.”
It was a position that at first was deemed laughable by many, and to some was a cover for Cuban’s decision to film his reality television show, “Shark Tank,” instead of attend the Mavericks’ meeting with Williams in early July before he chose to re-sign with the Nets.
But then the season started, and it began to look like Cuban might have had a point, because Williams spent the first few months of the season looking far from a player worthy of the $100 million contract he signed with the Nets.
But the Mavericks also have endured their share of struggles this season. After Nowitzki sat out the first several weeks recovering from right knee surgery, Dallas fell into such a deep hole that it’s likely to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2000.
Williams entered the All-Star break averaging 16.7 points and 7.6 assists while shooting 41.7 percent from the field and 34.7 percent from 3-point range — numbers far below his pedigree — and whether he was directly involved or not, his play was viewed as a key reason in the Nets’ up-and-down start that led to the firing of Avery Johnson in late December.
He was listed as having one of the most onerous contracts in the NBA recently by multiple publications, something that would have been unheard of when the Nets were celebrated for re-signing him a few months earlier.
But then the decision was made for Williams to sit out the final two games before the All-Star break in order to undergo a round of platelet rich plasma treatment on his ailing ankles, which have been an ongoing issue all season, and receive a third round of cortisone shots in both ankles shortly thereafter.
Suddenly, Williams looked like a player worthy of the contract he received, and the kind of player the Nets envisioned they were getting when they signed him. Since the break, Williams is averaging 23.4 points and 7.7 assists and is shooting 47.6 percent from the field and 46 percent from 3-point range.
“You can’t overstate it,” Carlesimo said of the impact of Williams’ improved play. “He’s playing at such a level right now … your point guard always sets the tone. He’s moving the ball. He’s shooting the ball so well, he’s playing with so much confidence.”
Now, the Nets head into tonight’s game against the Mavericks confident they have their franchise centerpiece. And perhaps, Cuban is less confident his team is better off with cap room instead.