Deron Williams won’t play in Brooklyn with hamstring injury

We have to bring the intensity that we had in the last two games to the next game and carry it over.

Now a Dallas Maverick, and one of the team’s better players at that, a shaven-headed Williams comes home and is expecting…absolutely nothing.

“We’ve all been through it. I get booed in Houston”. “Those Brooklyn fans, they expected more out of me. I’m definitely enjoying it”, Williams told Yahoo.

Dallas shot the lights out in the first half, as they made 24 out of 34 shot attempts, or 70.6 percent, to take a 64-53 lead at halftime. “It takes a toll on you mentally”.

“Very disappointing, man. Very disappointing”, Williams said of his injury before the game.

Their consolation was a thriller that the Nets lost, 119-118, in overtime, ending with Jarrett Jack missing a mid-range, fade-away jumper at the buzzer as Brooklyn fell to 8-21.

It was a weird experience to walk back into the Barclays Center, Williams said, but he was delighted to catch up with several of the employees at the arena.

In February 2011, the Jazz traded Williams to the Nets for Derrick Favors, Devin Harris, cash, and two first-round draft picks.

Williams, a former All-Star point guard whose career foundered with the Nets under the weight of a five-year, $99 million contract, has been revitalized with the Mavs.

This is shaping up to be a long season for Mavericks fans, and the absence of Williams will only exacerbate the team’s issues. “I felt like I didn’t know if I was ever going be healthy again. Some of the hardest in my life”, Williams said. “It didn’t work out the way anybody had hoped”. Because do you want to know who else is not worthy of a max deal? Five different players connected from beyond the arc, including a 5-of-5 night from Bojan Bogdanovic.

You hear people, especially former athletes now in the media, make mention of how that period of being great (or even just good) falls off quicker than they can believe, and Deron Williams is pretty much the poster boy for that idea. If you want to just analyze stats, I think going 6-for-14 from the free throw line was the game-changer when you look at it in simplistic terms.

Man, the end came quick for Deron Williams in his prime, huh?

Wednesday would have been the first game for Williams since the Nets bought him out of his contract in July.

This is my fourth season covering the Nets and over that time I have fully explored the depths of Lopez’s minuses (defense, mobility, passing, hustle) and his lone plus (scoring).

Brook Lopez said of the game, “It was back and forth”. If Williams wasn’t stepping on the court, that’d be one thing, but the guy was trying to play as much as he could.

Hamstring aside, Williams is in a better place physically. As the injuries piled up, Williams admitted it was hard for him to fathom even playing basketball after his contract was up. I have a better rhythm here. At the time owner Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov thought Williams was the centerpiece of a championship roster.

Hours before Williams strained his left hamstring against the Raptors, Cuban was contemplating how close the 11-year veteran was to being comfortable in the Mavs’ offense. He’s someone battled injuries and was a part of a team that was ruined by an incompetent general manager, but because he was the point guard and was getting paid lots of money, he gets the blame.