Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

The Nets legacy of Deron Williams comes down to one thing

TORONTO — You can only sidestep the issue for so long, because it will find you. There is no avoiding the interrogation. Maybe there was a time when, say, Don Mattingly could play an entire career, participate in all of five playoff games and emerge with his reputation unscathed. But that was a different time.

That was a different sporting culture.

Now, eventually, a player like Deron Williams is forced to answer for his talent, is expected to deliver on a decade of promise. Now, two months shy of his 30th birthday, at the conclusion of his ninth season as a pro, it is time for Williams to become what the sport has expected him to be from the start.

“At any level,” Paul Pierce said Friday afternoon, “there are always going to be questions about you until you reach that ultimate goal.”

Pierce knows. For years, it seemed Pierce was destined to be a basketball Mattingly, performing ably and admirably for an erstwhile dynasty in an era when that royal house, the Celtics, was miles away from adding a 17th banner to the collection. Except there came a moment when a deal here and a deal there yielded an opportunity to rise. And Pierce rose.

Now he is a supporting player on this Nets team that opens a playoff season it has been waiting for since last July, and he understands the team will go as far as Deron Williams allows it to go. He sees a terrific player on the cusp of going either way: sitting up and seizing the moment, or falling back and proving his critics right.

“I think he’s changed the perception people have of him,” Pierce said. “Before he was a great player with a lot of good numbers but who can’t win because people thought him selfish or whatever. But he’s shown he’ll sacrifice and do what’s necessary to help a team win a championship.”

Well, he has shown an inclination toward that, anyway. He showed he can be the equal of his $98 million contract during the key elements of the regular season, when he helped re-shape Brooklyn from a Knicks-level calamity to a team that, by rights, should have had a top-four seed in the East.

But the truth is, until Williams fulfills his role in the Nets’ playoff journey, his will be a career forever measured by what might have been far more than what is has been. Part of that is the burden of being such a precocious talent so early in the game. In college, he was the engine behind a superb Illinois team that came within five points of the 2005 NCAA championship.

Two years later, as a 22-year-old, he led the Jazz to the Western Conference Finals, averaging 19.2 point and 8.6 assists in the playoffs. Then, in 2008, he was beyond spectacular, going for 21.6 points and 10.0 assists in a six-game playoff win over Houston and a six-game loss to the Lakers.

Those were the days when he was an even-money pick with Chris Paul as the best point guard in the league. And there are times when it seems those seasons took place sometime in the late 1970s. Actually, there are times when it’s hard to remember that Deron Williams is the same one presently wearing No. 8 for the Nets.

Deron Williams squares off with Kyle LowryPaul J. Bereswill

“The road,” Williams said, “starts here. Starts in Toronto. We’re ready for this.”

You know Pierce will be ready. You can state with a reasonable level of certainty Kevin Garnett, for all the physical issues he has dealt with lately, will be ready. They were imported, after all, to be April pathfinders, not January grinders.

Williams? His will be the key matchup of the series. The Raptors spent the first third of the season trying to deal Kyle Lowry, but after failing miserably at the tanking portion of their schedule, they simply watched Lowry develop into one of the most valuable players in the conference, the key to everything Toronto does well.

“He’s a tough competitor,” Williams said. “Aggressive both ends of the floor, a shot-maker who can make shots from everywhere on the floor.”

And the numbers say Lowry had the better year, too. But there is this: Lowry at his best never has been — never has approached — Williams at his best. And Williams is in his prime; those performances from 2007 and 2008 shouldn’t be the recollections of an old man looking back at stolen youth.

They should still reside somewhere inside Deron Williams. If he can summon them? Sit back. Relax. This could take a while.

If not? Blink and the ride could be over before you know it.