It will take more than two starts and 12 games – a small sample size in the scope of a season and a career – for a chance at a reset to morph into a revival.
But if that happens and Ziaire Williams takes a chance with the Nets and turns into the consistent minutes he never had with the Grizzlies, Wednesday night could be one of those foundational layers.
When Xavier associate head coach Adam Cohen, on Stanford’s staff during Williams’ lone season with the Cardinals in 2020-21, watched clips from the Nets’ loss to the Celtics, he could feel the emotion in Williams’ game, the joy that was evident. throughout the year with the Cardinals which then became the ups and downs of a three-year stint with the Grizzlies, prompting a new start in Brooklyn when he was still 23 years old. old
Williams paced the Nets with 23 points and six rebounds on 8-for-14 shooting, marking the fifth time in his career he has scored 20-plus points.
Williams has always had potential.
There’s a reason he’s the 10th overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, Cohen said.
He has a frame — 6-foot-9 and a wingspan that adds length on defense — that teams want, too. Injuries and lost roles have hindered his first chance to put it all together in the NBA, but so far, Williams has earned his second.
“If you’re a one-and-done prospect … you rarely have immediate success,” Cohen told The Post. “And I think I had a lot of success in my freshman year, and unfortunately, the injury happened.”
With Dorian Finney-Smith out Monday against the Pelicans and again Wednesday, Williams cracked the Nets’ starting lineup for the first time, and he completed his second rebound in New Orleans before continuing his progress two days later.
Early in the first quarter, Williams intercepted a pass near midcourt and sprinted downfield for a transition dunk.
Later, he cut backdoor, collected a pass from Cam Thomas and completed a layup.
At one point, Jayson Tatum drove at Williams, and the defensive tight end – a strength, Cohen said – forced a turnover.
It captures all-around contributions Williams made at Stanford and flashed in early NBA cameos.
He finished with 16 points in the first half, and with the Nets still within striking distance to start the third quarter, he floated into open space and hit a 3.
Through 12 games, Williams averaged career-best numbers in points per game, rebounds per game, field goal percentage, 3-point percentage – almost everything.
“They just took the dog away from me,” Williams said of the Nets on Wednesday. “That’s the most realistic way I can put it.”
Those skills made him a top recruit from Notre Dame High School and Sierra Canyon School, where Williams impressed Cohen and the Stanford staff with his ability to understand concepts and read defensively while also being able to guard — with length — on the perimeter.
He can fill three or four positions, Cohen said, when he can switch, and that’s “an unusual talent.”
After arriving in Memphis, the Grizzlies started him 31 times in the regular season and once in the playoffs, while using him at least once to guard Stephen Curry during the Western Conference semifinal series.
His optimism about the future grew.
But Williams then missed the first 24 games of his second season with an injury and ended up starting just four games and 15 years after that.
Williams felt “trapped” at times in Memphis and said he felt like “a bird finally let out of the cage” after arriving in Brooklyn in a July trade that gave the Grizzlies some cap space.
“It shows that the talent is there,” Cohen said of his rookie role and his matchup with Curry, “and now it’s just consistency, can it come out of him, can he continue to develop and improve the way I think we all know it can?”
Wednesday is a sign.
The Nets, in rebuilding mode, will offer Williams a chance to develop through reps, through game minutes, through tough matchups on defense and a role on offense.
He may lose his starting spot after Finney-Smith returns on Friday, but a game like Wednesday’s will help him carve out regular minutes.
That’s not always the case in Memphis, especially if injuries start to limit his availability. This made Williams potentially waived in the offseason. And it might just give you the career you need.
