POINT OF RETURN
Yet again, Nets’ Deron comes alive after break
LOS ANGELES — Lost amid Jason Collins’ historic arrival might be the biggest development of what has been a rollercoaster season for the Nets: Deron Williams looking like an AllStar again.
Just like last season, when the point guard exploded after the AllStar break, he has looked like a completely different player in the three games the Nets have played since the break.
Williams is averaging 23 points, 6.7 assists and shooting 48.9 percent from the field after going off for 30 points and seven assists in Sunday’s 108102 win over the Lakers.
“I’m feeling better,” Williams said after the win. “Definitely feeling better confidencewise, healthwise, so hopefully it can continue.’’
Williams thought he had gotten over ankle issues that plagued him the first several months of last season, after averaging 22.9 points and 8.0 assists following last year’s AllStar break.
But Williams suffered a sprained right ankle in an offseason workout, an injury that sidelined him until the Nets’ preseason finale in Miami. Williams then suffered multiple sprains of his left ankle that kept him out of 16 games, and eventually led to him to get cortisone shots and plateletrich plasma treatment last month. He said last week he’ll have to “reevaluate” his ankles at the end of the season.
That said, Williams has started to look like the kind of player the Nets expected when they signed him to a fiveyear, $100 million contract. They believed him to be the face of the franchise’s move to Brooklyn when he became a free agent in July 2012 — and the player they built around when they brought in his former Jazz teammate Andrei Kirilenko, along with Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
“He should have confidence,” Joe Johnson said. “He should always have confidence, regardless of the circumstances of how you’re playing. We’re men and we’re on the highest level of basketball, so confidence should always be there. He’s just got to keep playing.”
Confidence admittedly has been an issue for Williams, who has a tendency to get inside his own head and focus on what’s going wrong. The issue has intensified over the past two years, as the myriad ankle issues and the ensuing battle to stay on the court and play to the level he’s accustomed to have affected his mental state.
That’s why the Nets, in particular Garnett and Pierce, have gone out of their way to try to get Williams to take some of that pressure off of himself. As someone who put plenty of pressure on himself during his playing career, and who endured several difficult seasons in Minnesota, Garnett can relate to what Williams is going through.
“I’ve always said [Williams] overthinks a lot of things,” Garnett said. “He’s better than what I think he gives himself credit for. He’s very hard on himself, and from a person who was young once and understood what putting a lot of pressure on yourself, putting expectations on yourself, as a vet I try to lighten it up or try to lighten his load as much as I can. … I just try to continue to encourage him, and just be real with him.
“A lot of times he just wants to be good, he wants to be great, he wants to be perfect, and in this world there is no such thing. So, as a teammate, I just try to support him.”