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 and finished a layup.
At one point, Jayson Tatum drove on Williams, and his tight defense — his strength, Cohen said — forced a turnover.
It captured the all-around contributions Williams made at Stanford and flashed in his 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 — just about everything.
“They’re just bringing the dog out of me,” Williams said of the Nets on Wednesday. “That’s the realest way I can put it.”
His skill set made him a top recruit out of Notre Dame High School and Sierra Canyon School, where Williams impressed Cohen and the Stanford staff with his ability to understand passing concepts and defensive reads while also being able to guard — with his length — on the perimeter.
He can contain three or four positions, Cohen said, while being able to switch, and that is “an unusual talent.”
Once he arrived 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 their Western Conference semifinal series.
Optimism about his future grew.
But Williams then missed the first 24 games of his second season due to injury and ended up starting just four games and 15 the year after that.
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Williams felt “trapped” at times in Memphis and said he was like a “loose bird finally let out of his cage” after arriving in Brooklyn in a July trade that gave the Grizzlies some cap space.
“That shows that the talent is there,” Cohen said of the rookie role and matchup with Curry, “and now it’s just consistent, can they get it out of him, can he continue to develop and improve the way that I think we all know is possible?”
Wednesday was a sign of that.
The Nets, in rebuilding mode, will offer Williams opportunities to develop through reps, through game minutes, through difficult matchups on defense and a role on offense.
He might lose the starting spot after Finney-Smith returns as early as Friday, but games like Wednesday’s will help him carve out regular minutes.
That wasn’t always the case in Memphis, especially once injuries started limiting his availability. It made Williams expendable in the offseason. And it might’ve given his career the jolt it needed, too.
