When the Brooklyn Nets and Deron Williams mutually agreed to part ways over the summer, it was viewed as a breath of fresh air for both sides. The Nets would be done with a player that gave them more headaches than wins and Williams would get a chance to go somewhere else and continue his NBA career.
On the outside looking in, Williams time with the Nets was viewed as a hundred million dollar failure. Brooklyn bringing him in to be the face of the franchise didn’t result in the success the organization was looking for but the team failures had to do with more than just him. There were questionable trades that went down and coaching changes galore but all the blame was pinned on Deron.
It now appears that the blame that Deron dealt in Brooklyn with almost drove D-Will to hang it up.
Following from Michael Lee of Yahoo! Sports.
“It took a lot out of me, man, those three years. Some of the hardest in my life,” Williams told Yahoo Sports of his time in Brooklyn. “Made me question if I even wanted to play basketball when I was done with that contract.”
The pressures that Williams put upon himself, and the ones that were thrust upon him to be a franchise player in the league’s most unforgiving market have been swapped for peace of mind. It’s now a situation in which his only task is running a team and the reward is regular visits from family and friends who knew him as a kid from The Colony, Texas, long before basketball ever felt like business. Before it could cause any misery.
As he prepares for his first game back at Barclays Center on Wednesday, Williams isn’t upset by the prevailing sentiment that he was unable to handle playing in New York.
“It’s cool. There’s a lot of people, I guess, who aren’t built for New York,” Williams told Yahoo. “New York is not for everybody.”
If he could go back and change anything about his time with the Nets, Williams said he would change “everything.”
“I wish I wouldn’t have been hurt. I wish I would’ve played better and people didn’t feel like I was just stealing money. That’s the last thing I want people to feel like,” Williams told Yahoo. “It didn’t work out the way anybody had hoped.”
“Like I said, I knew things would’ve been different if I wouldn’t have been hurt. And wouldn’t have had four coaches in three and a half years. Wouldn’t have had to learn a new system every six months,” Williams told Yahoo. “But things happen for a reason. It’s all God’s plan. That part of my life is over. And I can focus on this. It’s a new chapter in my life. I’m excited about this.”
“You know, you can always think, what ifs? But you never know. I probably still would’ve been hurt. Still would’ve had to have ankle surgeries on both ankles. So you never know,” Williams told Yahoo. “Being hurt takes a toll on you. You’ve got expectations being put on you. ‘Missing’ posters being put up all around New York. It’s just a lot of pressure there. Not only from the outside, but pressure I put on myself. But I feel like there is not much pressure now.”
Joe Johnson was surprised when Deron left. Joe says it’s ‘not that bad’ in Brooklyn but apparently it was getting to the point where D-Will wanted to step away from the game.
Now in Dallas, Williams has had a small career renaissance running the show for the Mavs and Rick Carlisle. He’s averaging over 15 points per game for the first time since 2013, but while his assists per game is the lowest since his rookie year, he’s doing a better job at scoring efficiently. He’s getting to the free throw line almost four times per game and shooting a career-high 92 percent from the line.
He just looks better in a new offense and a new spot. He’s home and there’s nothing like playing at home.
