Dallas Mavericks And Deron Williams Can't Save Each Other

Maybe it’s just a perfectly understandable Eat the Rich mentality, but even the most altruistic NBA observer couldn’t keep from having a bit of fun last week watching Mark Cuban’s very public jilting unfold.

We lambasted Cyber Dust, photoshopped mustaches onto his face, and entertained hilarious visuals of him desperately texting while driving around downtown Dallas (no, wait, Houston!). While it’s doubtful Cuban cares much about any of that, this week’s events might prove to be even worse in the long run.

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Taking in the rubble that is the Dallas Mavericks’ roster after the DeAndre Jordan storm blew through Texas, Cuban has decided to keep kicking the rebuilding can down the road by scouring the warmed over scrapheap of leftover free agents for any player willing and able to chase Western Conference mediocrity.

Hello Deron Williams, we’ve been waiting for you.

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Timing is a helluva thing in sports. In the pantheon of great clichés swirling around our beloved athletic competitions, “timing is everything” is right up there with atrocities such as “taking it one game at a time,” “giving 110 percent” or starting a sentence with “at the end of the day.” Nevertheless, countless careers, championships and dynasties have hinged on simple temporal fortuitousness.

Who knows how many Finals the Portland Trail Blazers might have appeared in had Arvydas Sabonis actually had functioning knees by the time he arrived stateside? Would Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant have stuck it out a bit longer if Karl Malone‘s untimely knee injury didn’t torpedo the Los Angeles Lakers‘ chances of securing their fourth title in five years in 2004? Could the Houston Rockets have won a championship if healthy postseasons from Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming had coincided more often?

These thought experiments can be exasperating. If you allow your mind to wander too freely through these injury-free parallel universes, before you know it, your image is starting to fade from the family portrait on the mantle, your mom is married to Biff Tannen, and Ned Flanders is the unquestioned lord and master of the world.

A world in which Deron Williams and Dirk Nowitzki team up in Dallas certainly could have had its intrigue too — if it wasn’t coming into existence about six years too late.

This isn’t to eulogize the long dead notion of “Deron Williams, NBA superstar” — that’s already been done time and time again. Part of what makes Williams’ decline so perplexing is the lack of a clear cut inflection point that we can point to as the moment it all started going awry.

The obvious candidates are his ankles. Years of ankle injuries, both minor and major, seem to have gradually robbed Williams of the strength, speed and burst that defined his run alongside Chris Paul as the game’s next great point guard midway through the last decade. In 2010, Williams would utilize his prodigious frame to unleash blustery drives to the rim where he could bully smaller defenders or soar past larger ones; but in 2015, it just seems to weigh him down.

Every so often Williams seduces fans and media alike with a throwback performance that hits like a morphine shot, momentarily easing the pain and numbing the mind, but doing little to stave off the slow death of his time as an elite NBA point guard. If anything, these flashes make Williams even harder to watch.

We value linear progressions in our stars. Whether on the upswing or downturn of their careers, sudden spikes or dips in athletes’ production muddy our assessments and keep us frustratingly hooked as we question the authenticity of whatever given trend we’re witnessing.

The Mavericks and Deron Williams are at similar points in their respective basketball life cycles — pinnacles of glory firmly in the rearview, yet not quite at the end of the road. As long as Mark Cuban continues his Faustian practice of populating Dirk Nowitzki’s supporting cast with B-level free agents at the expense of cultivating the kind of young, cheap talent the current CBA places such a premium on, players like Williams will always be available.

Though Williams will be relieved of the burden of expectations that came with his previous team and the contract it gave him, it’s far too late for him and the Mavericks to save each other.

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Dallas Mavericks And Deron Williams Can’t Save Each Other

By Jameson Miller | Jul 16, 2015

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