by Jordan Garretson, January 30, 2012

Deron Williams is red-hot and on their best nights, the Nets are following his lead.

D-Will continued his recent scoring tear over weekend, scoring points and carrying the Nets to a 99-96 win over Cleveland on Friday.

The Nets were without Mehmet Okur and MarShon Brooks again and only dressed 10 players Friday at Cleveland, but that was no problem for D-Will. No. 6 was 9-of-18 from the field — including hitting 5-of-9 from 3-point range — on the way to a team-high 27 points. He also dished out 10 assists to collect his fourth-straight double-double and ninth of the season.

Cavaliers coach Byron Scott was complimentary of D-Will's performance and the way he went at Cavaliers rookie point guard Kyrie Irving.

"Deron Williams is a quiet assassin," Scott told the New York Post. "When Deron sees a rookie point guard, he's gonna go at his throat."

Deron's aggressiveness against the Cavaliers was the product of some adjustments that No. 8 has made in his game recently to help the Nets more with his scoring. After hearing the pleas of teammates to attack the basket more, D-Will has delivered.

"Deron Williams is one of those point guards who's going to come at you," Scott said.  "And if you don't accept the challenge, he's going to tear you up."

Sixers coach Doug Collins, whose team D-Will victimized for 34 points last week, told the Post that D-Will remains one of the most dangerous players in the game and he alone makes the Nets a threat to win on any given night.

"He's definitely the head of the snake," Collins said. "An incredibly aggressive player. He will isolate at the top and attack you, he'll get you in pick and rolls, he'll get down to that post, a very good pump-fake and you get in the air, get him to the free throw line, very strong. ... Most everything they do, obviously, goes through him."

After Friday's game the Nets were 6-2 in games where D-Will scores more than 20 points. The trend gives weight to what Deron has been hearing from his teammates recently: Be aggressive and try to score, he told The New York Post:

"My teammates are really encouraging me that I need to be aggressive and pretty much told me I need to score for us to be successful," he said. "I averaged 20 points last year so it's not that I don't score. It's just the way I was going about it. I like to get people involved and that's how I get my confidence. But it wasn't really happening early so I kind of [reversed] that role [to] score first."

Deron got off to a hot start on Friday, scoring or assisting on each of his team's first 14 points as they jumped out to a 14-8 lead. Cleveland closed the gap several times, only to see D-Will pump it right back up. With a trey at the four-minute mark, No. 8 put New Jersey in front 21-16 and a pass to Jordan Farmar one minute later made it 25-18. By the end of the quarter, New Jersey led 30-20 on the back of 10 points and five assists from their All-Star point man.

"The guys played hard and they came out with a lot of focus early in the game. I think we set the tone for this game in the first quarter," coach Avery Johnson said. "The first few minutes of the game we moved the ball, we got stops. We executed our game plan and just made it tough on them."

The lead was an identical 10 points at halftime, but the Nets poured it on in the third from long range. D-Will hit two of the team's five threes in the quarter as they broke the game open. They kept up that pace in the fourth, as Deron passed out two assists in the first minute, then knocked down a trey with 10:08 to go, briefly putting New Jersey in front by 16.

Cleveland closed the gap in the final minutes, but was never closer than two possessions until the final buzzer, when Irving hit a three to make it a three-point loss for the Cavs. The win, without Brooks and Okur and with Kris Humphries ill, was a big one for the Nets, as D-Will told The Associated Press.

"We wanted a winning streak bad," he said. "We didn't know if Kris would be available, but he came out and battled through it. He's a warrior. It's definitely a good win without those guys and Kris being sick."

The victory was the second straight for the Nets and fourth in their last six games. Over that time, D-Will has averaged 22.3 points and 9.5 assists per game. He now ranks fourth in the NBA in assists per game and 15th in scoring average for the season.

STREAK STOPPED

D-Will followed up his 27-point outing in Cleveland by dropping 24 on the Raptors on Sunday night, but injuries finally caught up to the rest of the Nets in a 94-73 loss to Toronto at home.

After putting together their first winning streak of the season with victories Wednesday and Friday over the 76ers and Cavaliers respectively, Deron said the Nets may have entered Sunday's game against Toronto lacking a little something.

"You win some games and you kind of get a little complacent. I think that's what happened," Deron told The Record. "I don't think we put as much emphasis on this game as we should have ... this was a winnable ballgame – a game we should have been a little more ready for."

According to The Record's Andy Vasquez, D-Will was not the culprit. Instead, poor team shooting doomed New Jersey's chances, Vasquez wrote:

Williams wasn't the problem. He continued his solid play, scoring 24 points and dishing out six assists. But he was about the only one. Anthony Morrow (14 points) was the only other Net in double figures. The offense was remarkably stagnant, as the Nets shot 36.5 percent from the field and 31.8 from three-point range and scored just 14 points in the third quarter.

Coach Avery Johnson blamed a lack of movement for the team's struggles and thought that after watching Deron go off on the Sixers and Cavs, the Nets weren't ready to complement him on Sunday.

"Ball wasn't moving. If you noticed the last two or three games, even when Deron was scoring most of the time the ball was passed two or three times. Tonight it was like, ‘OK, Deron, you come out with a 95-point play for us and the rest of us will stand around and you win the game for us.' That's not going to work."

The loss also continued the Nets' bizarre, season-long slide at home inside the Prudential Center, dropping them to 2-6 in the arena. Deron knows the Nets must improve at home if they plan to move on this season.

"You've got to get that confidence at home," D-Will said. "I felt like we had it in Utah [with the Jazz]. We just didn't feel like we were going to lose at home. And I think we need to try to get that here. We don't have it right now. It's definitely something we can work towards."

NEXT UP

Even though New Jersey split the weekend set, the Nets have won two of three, a span in which Deron is averaging 28.3 points per game. New Jersey has also won three of its last five to pull within two games of eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

The recent surge — spearheaded by D-Will — has the Nets thinking playoffs. But with just a 7-14 record thus far, Deron believes the Nets will have to be a lot better to finish the year in a postseason spot. Even so, the playoff talk amid a sub-.500 record is a little unfamiliar, Deron told The Star-Ledger. But with the Nets playing better, the point guard is thrilled to have his squad in the postseason conversation:

"We go on a little win streak, and we can climb spots pretty easily," he said. "It's a lot different. You've got to be above .500 in the West to be in the playoffs, sniff the playoffs. So it's a lot different. But it's good for our team right now, because of the way we started, because we put ourselves in a little hole. But we're not out of it."

And with the impending returns of players like Brooks, Okur and most importantly big man Brook Lopez, Deron told The Post the Nets have a chance to be even better down the road if they can keep playing well now.

"Yeah, we want to think like that, that's why we're trying to win as many games as possible so we're not just digging ourselves out of a rut when Brook comes back and Memo [Mehmet Okur] gets healthy and the rook [MarShon Brooks] gets healthy," Williams said. "We're playing good basketball without these guys right now, so once they get back we're going to be even better."

D-Will and the Nets get the chance to continue that climb on Tuesday as they head to Indianapolis for a getaway game Tuesday against the Pacers. D-Will went for 22 points and eight assists in New Jersey's 108-94 loss to Indiana on Jan. 2. The game will present a formidable challenge for the Nets to begin another winning streak, as the Pacers are 5-1 at home and 7-3 in their last 10 games overall.

Tuesday's game can be seen at 7 p.m. EST on YES. 

RELATED STORIES

• Nets down Cleveland Cavaliers, 99-96, putting them in a playoff hunt (The Star-Ledger, Jan. 28)
• Nets winning streak snapped with 94-73 loss to Raptors (The Record, Jan. 29)
• Deron's play leading to Nets' gain (The New York Post, Jan. 29)
• Nets conquer Cavaliers, feel playoffs within reach (The New York Post, Jan. 28)
• Williams leads Nets past Cavaliers, 99-96 (The Record, Jan. 28, 2012)
• Deron says Nets 'complacent' vs. Raptors (NY Daily News, Jan. 30, 2012)