Mike Mazzeo, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

D-Will comes up short in clutch again

ATLANTA -- If you wanted to sum up Deron Williams' disappointing tenure as a Brooklyn Net in one play, this was it.

Wednesday night. Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs. Closing seconds. Nets trail the top-seeded Atlanta Hawks by two.

Joe Johnson probes the paint and eventually finds Williams in the left corner. Kent Bazemore flies over to run Brooklyn's 30-year-old point guard off the 3-point line.

Williams takes a dribble toward the basket along the baseline. Bazemore is gone. Williams is wide open. Ten ticks remain on the clock.

Williams pulls up and fires a jumper from 16 feet away. If he makes the shot, he has a chance to be a hero and make everyone forget about how much he'd struggled for much of the game.

But the ball doesn't go in. Instead, it rolls around the rim ... and out.

Over the past three seasons, in the final five minutes of playoff games in which the Nets are ahead or behind by five points or fewer, Williams is 2-for-17 from the field.

The Nets went on to lose to the Hawks 96-91. They're now down 2-0 in the first-round series. Only 6.1 percent of teams in NBA history have ever come back from a 2-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series (16 out of 261).

"It felt really good," Williams said of the shot. "I thought it was in. I let it go and then it hit the rim and just rimmed out."

Williams finished with just two points on 1-for-7 shooting. He did have 10 rebounds and eight assists, but he also had three turnovers, and the Nets were outscored by 11 points during his 28 minutes on the court.

Williams has been heavily scrutinized over the years for never being able to live up to the max contract he signed with the Nets in the summer of 2012.

Paul Pierce was the latest one to take a shot at Williams, telling ESPN.com that Williams didn't want to be an MVP candidate, and the New York media pressure had gotten to him.

Williams had a great chance to silence all of his critics, at least for the time being. But it didn't happen. And given how open he was, you had to feel for him a little bit.

"I'm sure I'll think about [the miss] tonight," Williams said.

Nets coach Lionel Hollins said he wasn't worried about Williams.

"He had 10 rebounds, he had eight assists, he played well," Hollins said. "He was defending. He made some hustle plays. Shooting comes and goes. People can criticize all they want, but if you are not in the game performing and doing it and going through the battle, you can't say anything."

Hollins' comments sounded similar to what former Nets coach Jason Kidd said when asked about D-Will after he went scoreless and missed all nine of his shots in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Miami Heat in 2013-14.

"I thought he had some great looks. Some were around the rim," Kidd said then. "But the other thing he did well is he set the tone. He was attacking and getting the ball into the paint. He had seven rebounds and six assists, so we look for him to bounce back in Game 3 with making shots, but I thought his overall game was really good."

Williams shot a career-low 38.7 percent during the regular season, making just 44.5 percent of his layups.

He has gone 6-for-18 from the field in two games against the Hawks.

A lack of confidence has been an issue for him in the past. But Williams said he just doesn't want to take bad shots.

"That's the way they're playing me," Williams said. "They're really hard on ball screens. I'm trying to make the right pass early on and just play. I don't wanna take a lot of unwarranted shots against this team, take a lot of earlier shots. When you do that, you miss, and then they get long rebounds and they're running and that's playing into their favor also. They're in the lane, clogging the lane, so if I go in there and turn it over, same thing.

"I definitely wanna be aggressive and knock down the open ones I get, but I'm not gonna try to force anything."

Williams appeared to hurt his finger on his left hand late in the first half, but he remained in the game. He had his left middle and ring fingers taped together after the game, though he wouldn't say anything about the injury.

D-Will's teammates remain positive that he can turn things around.

"Oh, he will," Joe Johnson said. "We're not worried about that. He's just gotta keep working hard and keep grinding through it."

The eight-seed Nets came in as heavy underdogs against the Hawks, but have stayed right with them on the road. Brook Lopez got more looks, scoring 20 points on 15 shots -- eight more shots than he had in Game 1 -- while Jarrett Jack emerged once again with 23 points off the bench.

Brooklyn held Atlanta to just 38.9 percent shooting, but the Nets were once again done in by turnovers (16 for 19 Hawks points) and their inability to hit 3-pointers (8-for-26). Paul Millsap (19 points, seven rebounds) and Al Horford (14 points, 13 rebounds, seven assists) didn't look hurt whatsoever, and the Hawks drained 12 triples.

The Nets almost rallied back late from an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter, but ultimately fell short.

If only D-Will had made that shot.

Now, Brooklyn finds itself in a position where it essentially has to win the next two games on its home floor.

At least the Nets have proven they can hang with the Hawks.

But the harsh reality is that they're two losses away from elimination.

"It's encouraging because we've had our chances," Williams said. "But it's discouraging because we weren't able to pull one out."

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