May
30
THE EVOLUTION OF DERON WILLIAMS!
Filed Under Loose Balls
It’s about Time People Started Noticing the Stud, Second-Year Point Guard of the Jazz!
As Utah Jazz point guard Deron Williams has dazzled the basketball world with his play in this year’s playoffs and quickly drawn the praise of those around the game, I say it’s about time that the world has finally noticed just how great the always underrated “Dee-ron” truly is. Having graduated in December 2004 from the University of Illinois, I had the pleasure of watching Williams blossom in his three seasons with the Fighting Illini.
I’ve never seen a player make an improvement from his freshman to sophomore season as Williams did. As a freshman, Williams was a very solid point guard in terms of getting the Illini into their offense and dishing out assists. Yet he did not have much of a jump shot and was often left open on the outside.
In one game during his freshman season at Purdue, the Boilermakers sagged off Williams and dared him to shoot. He was passive at the time before former Illini Coach Bill Self gave him an earful. Williams began firing from the three-point land and struggled all night from the field as the Illini fell in defeat. Never would I have imagined at that time, the winter of 2003, that Williams would be where he is now. However, my impressions would change less than a year later.
Williams was flanked by Los Angeles Lakers’ big man Brian Cook and precocious Jazz rookie Dee Brown while a freshman at the University of Illinois and was simply a very solid player that year. Entering his sophomore season, Brown was the poster boy of Illinois basketball while Williams was merely expected to be steady and to improve.
My expectations of Williams changed instantly after seeing him practice before the start of the 2003-2004 season. At the time I was doing a story for a broadcast journalism class on Bruce Weber replacing Self as the Head Coach at Illinois and was attending a practice on Halloween of 2003. That’s when Williams truly first amazed me.
Remember how Williams dunked in Game One over the outstretched hands of the Spurs’ Tim Duncan. I know that explosion must have looked shocking to the NBA audience, considering Williams stocky build, and that’s exactly how I felt that day in 2003 when Williams did the same thing in an Illini practice.
The Illini were wrapping up a five-on-five, full-court drill when Williams took the ball from the top of the arc, dribbled into the lane and just exploded with a monster, right-hand slam on the right side of the rim. As my jaw dropped, Williams didn’t go nutz or anything. He simply walked to the baseline as if it was no big deal.
Apparently, it wasn’t a big deal as none of his Illini teammates said anything. I’m guessing Brown, Luther Head, Roger Powell and the rest of the team had seen plenty of this from Williams in pick-up games all summer long.
Anyways at that point, I knew Deron Williams was going to be a big-time player that season, and he was. I remember the sports section of The Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University, running a poll prior to the 2003-2004 season asking this question: which player, Dee Brown or Deron Williams, is going to be the Illini’s leading scorer this season?
One of the paper’s student sports columnists naturally wrote that Brown was going to pick up from his sensational freshman season, while the other (a former journalism classmate by the name of Mike Swazjka) said that Williams was going to shock people this year. I couldn’t have agreed more at the time, and Williams was later named to the All Big Ten First Team with the great Brown notching Second-Team honors.
Williams was the first player to buy into Bruce Weber’s motion system during his sophomore season, and he took off running. After having his jaw broken in an early season game, Williams returned to a home game at the Assembly Hall against Illinois State. Williams was not supposed to play much but had to as Illinois State almost shocked the Illini that Saturday afternoon.
Foreshadowing things to come in his college and pro career, Williams (and center Nick Smith) won the game based on their heroics, with Williams hitting a tough jumper at the top of the key to send the game into overtime. Williams would put the team on his shoulders several more times that season. After Devin Harris and Wisconsin rolled the Illini in Madison, Williams responded in Champaign by scoring 31 points during an inspired victory a month later.
Illinois later entered the NCAA Tournament that season as a five seed. After beating Murray State in the first round, the Illini were leaving Nationwide Arena at Ohio State’s campus when the four-seed Cincinnati Bearcats were getting ready to come onto the court. As they passed the Illini, the Bearcats began to talk trash how they were going to whoop Illinois in the second round.
The Bearcats, featuring players like Jason Maxiell and Tony Bobbitt, especially targeted their trash-talking at Williams, comically saying that he was “too pretty to play basketball.” Williams responded with 31 points in the 92-68 blowout in favor of the Illini. Eighteen of Williams’ points in that game came from beyond the arc. The Illini would bow out during the Sweet Sixteen to Duke, but the 2003-2004 season was only a preview of things to come for Williams and the Illini.
Williams Was the Catalyst of the 2004-2005 NCAA Runner-Up Illini!
Returning for his junior season, Williams and the Illini came out blazing, blowing out Gonzaga in Indianapolis before getting ready to play then #1-ranked Wake Forest and Chris Paul (the “gold standard” to which Williams has been compared to in the pros) in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge at the Assembly Hall. Prior to the game, ESPN commentator Jay Bilas had made the crucial mistake of saying that Williams would not even be a top-10 player in the ACC. After his comments caused a great buzz, Bilas tried to save face and recant.
Williams and the Illini simply let their play due to the talking, blowing out an ineffective Paul and an overrated Wake Forest squad. At that time, I was an intern with the Video Services Department at the University of Illinois and had the duty of running the replay machines on the jumbo scoreboard inside the Assembly Hall. After the game, I was helping the crew pack up inside the stadium when Williams was broadcast over the speakers as he did a post-game interview with the local radio station.
When asked about Bilas’ comments, Williams said that he could care less. However, in reality, he did care and used that to motivate himself. Williams recently described himself as always being considered an underdog and has used that mentality to take him where he his now.
Coming out of high school, a lot of schools had Williams as their second option. As one example, Georgia Tech wanted Williams only if the Yellow Jackets did not land Jarrett Jack. Williams once told me in an interview that he didn’t even visit the University of Illinois campus and was sold on Self saying that he and Brown would start together in the backcourt, a notion that many schools said would never happen.
Coming into Illinois and the Big Ten, Williams was overshadowed by fellow high school teammate and Indiana Hoosiers freshman guard Bracey Wright. At Illinois, it was Brown and not Williams who became the poster boy during their magical three years together. Even when he became a stud in the Big Ten, people still had problems pronouncing his first name, calling him Dee-ron instead of Deron (Darren).
When Williams was drafted with the number-three pick by the Jazz in the 2005 draft, many said that the team had made a mistake in passing Paul after trading up three selections. That consensus was shared by many after Paul had a great rookie season with the NO/OK Hornets under a less-demanding coach in Byron Scott while Williams struggled at times under the tough-as-nails Jerry Sloan.
Even when Illinois made its magical run to the 2005 NCAA Championship game, I always felt that Williams was underappreciated (with the exception of Weber, who frequently told Williams that he was the reason the team was so good). He was the straw that stirred the drink of that amazing Illinois team, which killed opponents all season with its precise, constant ball movement and dead-eye three-point shooting. Often getting his teammates going, Williams did not come out looking for his offense in most of those games that season. And yet he did not play one game in which he left you longing for more or didn’t have a major impact during that incredible season in which the Illini started 29-0.
And when he had to take over, Williams did it, sinking a three in the Elite Eight against Arizona to send the game into overtime. In the National Championship Game against North Carolina, Williams was aggressive from the get-go and led the Illini (along with Luther Head) during a second-half comeback that just fell short. Williams and Head proved what competitors they were by being locked-in on the three ball throughout the second half until the final minute of the game.
And now in his second season in the pros, Williams is finally getting the recognition that he deserves. His play in Game Seven against the Houston Rockets did not look like the play of a second-year point guard, and his dismantling of the Spurs on the offensive end during the Western Conference Finals has been a joy to watch.
The great thing about Williams is that he has always played his game (since his sophomore season at the U-of-I) and never lets anyone else stop him (whether it’s a grabby Bruce Bowen or a dinner host like Tony Parker). Williams is constantly running the show and can teach players like Kirk Hinrich and even Chauncey Billups a lesson in how to get an offense going.
Williams also plays with an inner confidence that borders on cockiness. He doesn’t think that too many players (if any) are better than him. Here’s a great example of this.
One of my buddies was interviewing Williams at the Pre-Draft Camp in Chicago prior to the 2005 NBA Draft, and he came away with a less-than-stellar impression of Williams. Specifically, my buddy told me how Williams was a “punk” who boasted in an interview that Chris Paul was too scared to play him in workouts for teams. While my buddy complained about Williams, I told him that he’s not a bad guy.
Williams is a competitor and has that edge like all great players. I can tell you this much, Williams never thought that Paul or another ACC point guard like Raymond Felton was better than him. Judging by what Williams had done with the Jazz in two seasons as compared to Paul and Felton, he was right.
But that should have been well-obvious beforehand if people simply watched how Williams’ runs a team as compared to these other guys. While the Jazz will be eliminated tomorrow night, Williams has come of age and will now be considered one of the best point guards in the league for years to come. Once again, why is this a surprise?
Slightly more than two years ago, Illinois had just wrapped up the Big Ten regular season title against Purdue at the Assembly Hall. As the confetti came down and the team’s amazing season was being celebrated, it was amazing to see where Williams had come in two seasons. As a freshman against Purdue, he looked unsure of himself on the offensive side of the ball. Two years later, he was cutting down the nets as the Illini faithful were chanting “one more year.”
Williams responded with a classic, “are you shitting me grin” that pretty much solidified my thought that he was going pro to bigger and better things. Boy did Williams know what he was doing!
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deron williams is a beast in the pros. he will be unstoppable. he is a monster.