Ziaire Williams taking advantage of fresh start with Nets: Bringing the dog out of me
It’ll 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 his window of opportunity with the Nets and turns it into the consistent minutes he never quite had with the Grizzlies, Wednesday night could serve as one of the foundational layers.When Xavier associate head coach Adam Cohen, on the Stanford staff during Williams’ lone season with the Cardinal in 2020-21, watched the clips from the Nets’ loss to the Celtics, he could sense the emotion in Williams’ game, the joy evident throughout his year with the Cardinal that then became the ups and downs of a three-year stint with the Grizzlies, prompting a fresh start in Brooklyn while still just 23 years old.
Williams paced the Nets with 23 points and six rebounds on 8-for-14 shooting, marking just the fifth time in his career he has scored 20-plus points.Williams has always possessed the potential.There’s a reason he was drafted No.
10 overall in the 2021 NBA Draft, Cohen said.He has the frame — 6-foot-9 and a wingspan that adds length to a defense — that teams covet, too.
Injuries and a disappearing role thwarted his first chance to put everything together in the NBA, but so far, Williams has capitalized on his second.“When you’re a one-and-done prospect … you rarely have immediate success,” Cohen told The Post.“And I think he did have some really good success that rookie year, and then unfortunately, these injuries 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 finished a rebound shy of a double-double in New Orleans before continuing that progress two days later.
Early in the first quarter, Williams intercepted a pass near mid-court and sprinted down for a transition dunk.Later, he cut backdoor, collected a pass from Cam Thomas an...