Here is the Jason Williams theory of point-guard basketball, circa 1999, Kings edition: "When the shots are there I'm gonna shoot 'em, and when they're falling they're falling, and when they're not falling I'm probably still gonna shoot 'em."

Why?

(Smiling.) "Because they're there."

Because they're there: The motto ought to be stripped across somebody's T-shirt by now. Why are the Kings poised to win a game at Denver tonight and crash the playoffs for just the second time in this mournful decade? Because they're there. Why will the Kings jack up 97 shots, as they did Sunday night in a crucial 111-100 defeat of Phoenix? Because they're there.

And why are the Kings, as a team, there? Well, it has to do with a lot of things, most of which by now seem inextricably linked. Take Vlade Divac or Chris Webber or Vernon Maxwell or Jon Barry out of the mix, despite their wholly disparate roles, and it is hard to imagine this team having come this far in this weirdly compacted season.

Take out Jason Williams, and it is hard to imagine deeply enjoying the ride one way or another.

Williams lit up Arco Arena again Sunday, but that's like saying the sun got warm on an August day in Citrus Heights. Jason Williams doesn't light up NBA venues anymore, he short-circuits them. If the Kings are the reflection of any single player this year, it is the rookie with the national rep and the local adoration society and the game-high 24 points against the Suns and the curious sense of conscience.

It isn't so much that Williams doesn't always listen to his conscience on the basketball court. It's far more severe than that: You watch Jason Williams long enough, and it becomes apparent that he finds the concept of a basketball conscience quite nearly useless altogether.

"He has clearly grown since the start of the season, but he still does some wild things out there. I mean, that's going to be him," said forward Corliss Williamson. "He still does the thing where you go, 'No!' and then a second later it's like, 'Oh, OK.'"

Williams was at it again Sunday, but, heck, it didn't matter much. It was only a game that it would have killed the Kings to lose -- a game, said coach Rick Adelman, "that we just had to have."

It was only a game for the first .500 season by a Kings team since Jason Williams was about 7 years old, and so here came Williams in the fourth quarter, pumping up a bomb of a three-point attempt with a 95-88 lead and missing, then coming back two possessions later to make a ridiculously difficult pop-out jumper just after a Cliff Robinson three-pointer had cut the Kings' lead to six.

After that, the Suns' Rex Chapman missed a three-point attempt, and Williams found himself pushing the ball upcourt, pedal to the metal, stuck in fifth gear, a phalanx of Phoenix jerseys around him. His team had a 99-91 lead and more than three minutes of clock time to wind, and so Williams, no teammates anywhere near him, went as he always does.

Right into the pile.

"When he went 1 on 4, I thought that was pushing it a little bit," Adelman said later, wearing his best what-doesn't-perforate-my-ulcer-only-makes-me-stronger smile. "We just needed to run the clock.

"But, you know, with Jason -- he's got guts. He's not afraid, even if he's having a tough night, to take the shot. And all he needs is that experience where he understands where he is, and where we are in a game."

Spoken like a coach emerging victorious; and so Adelman was. Williams drew the improbable foul call on the 1-on-4 play and sank both free throws for a 101-91 lead. Robinson hit a three-pointer for Phoenix. Williams answered with a 25-footer that brought down the house, but he wasn't finished: Two possessions later, it was through-the-legs and behind-the-back to Peja Stojakovic, who passed to Divac, who found Webber for a searing dunk, a 106-96 lead, and the game.

"The fans should be very excited they got a young and promising point guard," said the Suns' Jason Kidd. Not to worry on the excitement front. Chris Webber lends the Kings a presence, Vlade Divac a soul. But Jason Williams gives them an absolute absence of fear, and if that's a rookie characteristic, you'd probably order a truckload, assuming your heart could take it.

MARK KREIDLER can be reached at (916) 321-1149 or write him at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, 95852.