Mark Kreidler: Kings show patience with Jason

(Published March 8, 2001)

There was a sequence the other night at Arco Arena that explained, more than any theoretical discussion ever could, why the Kings won't give up on Jason Williams no matter how many times they might appear to be able to make a case for abandonment. It was no big deal, really. It happened in the blink of an eye, three straight possessions in the third quarter against Toronto. Williams first drove the basket with a beautiful cut into the lane for a layup, then took a pass from Chris Webber and sank a three-pointer, then came upcourt in transition and found Peja Stojakovic for an open jump shot.

Three possessions was all, yet the game seemed to swing right there, with Williams in the middle of it. The Kings went from trailing Toronto 64-61 to leading them 68-64, part of a 15-2 run that put them ahead to stay.

And if you were one of the people who either filed out of Arco or left the living-room couch that night saying, "Where has that guy been?" then congratulations: You know how it feels to be one of the people signing Williams' checks.

This has been the season for taking apart all the Williams arguments and putting them back together. Interestingly, the sum total in terms of resolution has been zip. In his third season as a pro, Williams remains maddeningly inconsistent, but he's just too talented -- too capable, for lack of a better way to put it -- to be discounted altogether.

And, you know, it's more than even that. Watching Williams' almost uniformly excellent play in that victory over the Raptors, it was impossible not to come away reminded that he has that game inside him. It's in there. It plays hide and seek sometimes; it appears to go away for days at a time. It's obvious that Williams can't just push the button and flip on the "A" game the way that, say, Webber seems to be able to.

But it is in there. And it is a beautiful thing. And that's really all you need to know about why people like Rick Adelman and Geoff Petrie and even the grand marshal of fundamentals, Pete Carril, are so reluctant to move more than half a foot off their collective position that Williams still can become the point guard the franchise needs him to be.

The folks who plug into some Kings outlet or other on a regular basis have by now heard it all. Williams is too controlled. He's not controlled often enough. He needs to let it rip. He needs to get a handle on himself. He won't play defense. He can't play defense.

There's even the John Thompson gospel, which people who saw the TBS telecast on Tuesday apparently couldn't avoid hearing. Thompson, the former Georgetown coach, posited the notion that Williams was actually better as a rookie than he is today, which must come as a shock to the coaches and teammates who have spent the last three years trying to help Williams blossom into a full-court NBA player instead of the one-dimensional entertainer he was in 1999.

The one thing you know about that rookie year is that Williams was looser on the court, and there's a reason for that: Adelman, a new coach taking over a team coming out of a lockout, didn't do much work with Williams. He gave him the ball and let him run the offense -- and the result was the most interesting Kings team in Sacramento history.

But playing in the NBA means being graded on the curve, and the most constant criticism of Williams is that he hasn't raised his game as the Kings have elevated their aspirations. It's completely valid, of course -- yet it still doesn't cover the story.

You can't watch Bobby Jackson play defense without surmising that Williams' defense could be better if he really gave a rip, but it's a huge leap from that thought to the one about Jackson being the better choice at the point. Watching Williams against Toronto, you were reminded that, when he's right, there are things Williams can do that very, very few guards in the NBA can match.

Adelman has attempted to mitigate Williams' consistency problems by using Jackson in exactly the right spots, and it's hard to argue with a 40-19 record.

In a way, in fact, one of the most interesting things about the Williams conversation is that it's all taking place within the framework of Sacramento's best regular season ever.

That's because the ultimate question isn't whether Jason Williams can help the Kings win some games, it's whether he can help them win a conference title.

Amazingly, three years into the experiment, that question still just rattles around. But maybe the most tantalizing, career-extending notion about Williams is this: He sure could.