With Deron Williams leaving the Brooklyn Nets for the Dallas Mavericks, prepare to be inundated with a tidal wave of predictable “homecoming” themed stories. This shopworn narrative will never die, and like the tattoos on D. Will’s arms read “Texas made DMW.”
In the grand scheme of things though, this transaction actually leaves both clubs stuck in NBA purgatory. Mark Cuban doesn’t really have a contender out West. In the NBA’s A-Team conference he just doesn’t have enough to compete. Put the Mavericks in the East though, and you could see them challenging Lebron James for NBA B-Team conference supremacy.
However, this Deron Williams is not your older brother’s Deron Williams.
Despite his reputation for being a good guy in the community and off the court, he doesn’t have a great reputation in the locker room. The phrase “coach killer” has been attached to his name quite often. This week he became Cuban’s consolation prize after DeAndre Jordan “Eric Gordonned” the Mavs. Or maybe you could say he “Cliff Alexandered” them; this is a Deron Williams feature piece- hence all the Illini basketball references.
But where all the Brooklyn Nets heading as a franchise? As we wrote in our Nets team needs column before this transaction happened: The Nets went all in a couple of seasons ago, but those big moves never paid off. Now, the franchise is close to meeting a fork in the road in terms of which direction to go. Lopez, Johnson and Young could be all off the books next summer, while Deron Williams is eating up a huge chunk of the organization’s cap for two more seasons.
Brooklyn has the ability to attract big-name free agents next summer when the cap is expected to make a major leap, so the Nets might be better off maintaining a hold pattern this offseason rather than making some rash decisions that would hurt their long-term flexibility.
As for the Mavs, well, check out what our #1 Mavericks team need was in our offseason analysis before they acquired Williams:
1. Point Guard: Let’s just say the Rajon Rondo era did not go as anticipated. I would be shocked if Dallas decided to bring Rondo back, so the team will need to look elsewhere to find a starting point guard since Devin Harris and Raymond Felton are best served coming off the bench at this point in their careers. An issue though is that there is not a great group of free agent point guards. Goran Dragic might be available, or Dallas could try to offer a huge deal to a restricted free agent such as Brandon Knight or Reggie Jackson.
A trade might be the route to go for the Mavericks to find a true upgrade.
David Kay is a senior feature NBA Draft, NBA, and college basketball writer for the Sports Bank. He also heads up the NBA and college basketball material at Walter Football.com and is a former contributor at The Washington Times Communities. David has appeared on numerous national radio programs spanning from Cleveland to New Orleans to Milwaukee to Honolulu. He also had the most accurate 2011 NBA Mock Draft and the most accurate 2012 NBA Mock Draft on the internet (Yup, repeat champ… #humblebrag), and finished with the second most accurate 2013 NBA Mock Draft (nearly a three-peat.) You can follow him on Twitter at David_Kmiecik.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes to the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. He also appears regularly on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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