T-Will Takes Over, Assists in Win
April 3, 2010
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.—Saturday at the IZOD Center, the Nets beat the Hornets, 115-87, behind a career-best 14 assists from rookie Terrence Williams. Williams, along with Chris Douglas-Roberts (team-high 17 points), led a second-quarter charge that left the Nets up 12 points at halftime. Eight Nets scored in double figures, and the team shot a season-high .582 while assisting a season-high 34 baskets. Though Chris Paul struggled (2-11 FGs), David West led New Orleans with 25 points on 7-of-10 shooting.
For the full recap, read Bob Considine's story on NBA.com: Click Here
T-Will Takes Over, Assists in Victory
The way Saturday’s 115-87 blowout victory against the Hornets played out, you knew this was coming. Back in the locker room, fresh off a career-best, 14-assist performance, Nets rookie Terrence Williams fielded an individual question and immediately dished off the credit.
“It wasn’t only me,” Williams said. “I did some things, but you’ve got to credit my teammates – they hit the shots. I would say that I had a little energy tonight, but that’s my job. When you come off the bench and you’re the energy guy, you’ve got to come in with energy.”
Williams took over in the second quarter, triggering an extended run that left the Nets up by as many as 17 points before the halftime lead settled to 12. He did it by scoring (12 points, 6-10 FGs) and by passing (5 assists) and he did it spectacularly, bringing down the house when he rescued an errant alley-oop from the rafters.
With four minutes remaining in the half, Williams flew up the right side in transition, and Devin Harris lobbed a pass as he crossed halfcourt. Williams rose from outside the paint, one arm fully extended, palming the ball at its peak and cramming it through the hoop. Neither the passer nor the recipient had any idea that would go down.
“I expected him to catch it but not all in one motion,” Harris said. “He’s freakishly athletic. It’s nice to know for future references what I can do.”
Williams: “I knew he was going to throw it; I didn’t know I was going to catch it. And then when it went it, I was surprised it went in. It wasn’t clean like I wanted it to be, but you know – two points!”
The Nets and their rookie swingman scored two points in many ways, all of them efficient, as the team shot a season-best .582 (46-79 FGs) while totaling 34 assists. Williams, who finished 7-of-13 from the floor, played alongside Harris and Keyon Dooling for stretches, causing matchup problems for whichever Hornet attempted to defend him.
Too quick for any forward – Williams repeatedly blew by James Posey, a veteran known for his defense – Williams even froze All-NBA guard Chris Paul with a second-quarter crossover. The Nets had long anticipated this, ever since snagging the swingman with the No. 11 pick of last June’s draft, tantalized by the athleticism and point forward potential.
“We couldn’t guard them out front at all,” said Hornets forward David West. “Terrence Williams was just too much: when he was on the court, he changed the game. He was a bad matchup for us.”
Williams dished his 14 assists to seven different Nets – four to Josh Boone, three to Kris Humphries and Chris Douglas-Roberts, as well as one each to Harris, Yi Jianlian, Dooling and Chris Quinn. He seemed especially at ease with Douglas-Roberts, who led the team with 17 points – the first time he’d done so since December 16 at Toronto.
The twosome connected several times in transition, with Douglas-Roberts twice feeding Williams for fast-break dunks. And Williams’ multiple assists to Boone and Humphries mostly came in the fourth quarter, as the Nets piled on 31 more points with the starters on the bench.
“He’s a guy who can run the point, play the 2, play the 3,” Harris said. “He’s athletic and does a lot of different things. It opens up a lot: it allows me to play off the ball a little bit more and it gives us another guy who can make decisions and make passes. He brings another dimension to our offense.”
Williams can admit that it helped when coach and general manager Kiki Vandeweghe reined in his minutes earlier in the year. With an edict to watch the team’s veterans and other NBA stars, Williams found himself absorbing lessons he soon proved able to apply.
“The light’s on right now!” Williams half-joked. “It was time to grow up – I’m in the NBA now; I’m not in high school, not in college. It was time to take responsibility for myself and my actions of why I was playing the way I was playing. I thank Kiki for that, and especially giving me the opportunity to play and really sitting me down and giving me the discipline to want to learn. Because if I was just staying out there 30 minutes a game and shooting 3-for-19 or something, I wasn’t going to get better from that.”
Two Point Guards Not Too Many For Hornets
When a rookie steps in for all-NBA point guard Chris Paul, and plays well enough to force extended minutes even after Paul returns, it’s going to draw attention. In 33 games as a starter, Darren Collison has averaged 18.2 points, 9.0 assists and 1.5 steals while shooting .408 from three and .473 overall, bolstering the Hornets’ offense while his All-Star teammate was waylaid by left knee surgery.
And with the league speeding up in recent years due to rules changes and a dearth of traditional big men, it’s become less of an issue to play the 6-foot guards side-by-side. Hornets coach and general manager Jeff Bower said there’s definitely a place in the league for smaller, quicker point guards, one that might not have existed before the shift.
“It hasn’t been tricky to reintegrate Chris,” Bower said. “They’re both high-quality people, they’re both team guys, and they’re both exceptionally talented; there’s enough minutes for those types of players. They’ve done well playing together, and they’ve done well playing the position separately. It’s something we’ll continue to experiment with in this last part of the season.”
But Saturday night, that meant David West – two-time All-Star, and yet often unsung – could do work away from the Nets’ defensive focus. With Paul and Collison struggling (combined 4-for-20 shooting), West willed himself to a game-high 25-point performance.
Operating out of the high post, West utilized an array of faceup moves to free himself for short runners and fadeaways to shoot 10-for-17. And he played off his point guards, finding space at the elbows for the catch-and-shoot J’s that earned him the “18-Foot Assassin” nickname from Paul.
“I think we did a great job on our pick-and-roll defenses of keeping (Paul) in front and corralling him, not letting him into the paint to make decisions,” Harris said. “Obviously, we gave up a great game to West, but for a big part of the game we did a good job of keeping him out of the paint.”
West, born in Teaneck, N.J., has now played his final game at the IZOD Center. He said pregame it was an odd feeling, knowing that the arena where he’d witnessed his first NBA game would be empty in the fall. Aware that the team’s eventual plan is to move to Brooklyn, he seemed ambivalent toward the prospect of an interim at the Prudential Center.
“I don’t know,” West said. “We’ll see (what happens). They’ve been here for a while, and I always thought it was a pretty good area for amateur basketball – there are a lot of kids coming up. So I think the Nets will be missed, with people not having an NBA representative in Jersey.”
