Billy King says Deron Williams told him not to wait on Dwight Howard – NBA News
The Brooklyn Nets front office spent much of the offseason acquiring and retaining players in order to build a strong roster to play the Nets debut season in Brooklyn. With expectations high and the Nets making a move to their
new $1 billion Barclays Centre arena, the Nets wanted to back up their efforts with a good on court performance as well next season, and hence went all out in their pursuit of the best players available on the market. And one of those players was All Star
centre and 3 time defensive player of the year Dwight Howard. Howard wanted to leave the Orlando Magic and the Nets General Manager Billy King targeted him aggressively, offering the Magic Centre Brook Lopez, Power Forward Kris Humphries, MarShon Brooks and
four future first round draft picks for the services of Howard. The deal did not go through, however.
And now, with the Nets having their roster locked in for the coming few seasons, Billy King in a recent interview said that Nets point guard Deron Williams told him not to wait for Howard and continue building the team.
"One thing Deron did say to me, he said, 'Please, just don't wait on Dwight. We can't wait and not have a team,'" said King while giving an interview for NBA TV's "The Association: Brooklyn Nets.”
King did decide to move on, and convinced Williams to re-sign for a five year max contract while also retaining Lopez, Humphries, Gerald Wallace and bringing in Joe Johnson in a trade with the Atlanta Hawks to complete the starting
five for next season. His ability to recruit Johnson and retain Williams was considered a big success for the Nets organization, and immediately placed the team in playoff conversation.
“The team of Brooklyn is bigger than one person. I owed it to the organization, I owed it to our fans, I owed it to Deron and the players that we have to build for Brooklyn, and we went forward and built our team,” added King.
Howard was eventually traded to the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn added a few more pieces around the core of their team to add depth to the roster, and in the process spent $330 million in one offseason to build the new roster.
The Nets will now have to go out on the court and prove that the money spent on the new arena and the roster was all worth it.
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