Deron Williams: The End of an Era

Wow has it been five years already? Feels like this cover was just yesterday:

"Who Wants a Piece of Them?", the cover asked. 

"Nearly half of us", the NBA replied as the Nets went 44-38 for the 2013-14 season. 

To be fair, some of that was due to injuries but some of it was due to mortgaging your future by trading for two 36-year-olds. Looking back, I think the blame has to go on Brook Lopez. Now he's playing All-NBA caliber defense and a credible threat from beyond 3P but he chose to do neither of those things for the 2013-14 Nets. Yet I digress.

Deron Williams was waived by Brooklyn on July 11, 2015, using the Stretch Provision. For those unfamiliar:

When an NBA player is waived, the guaranteed money owed to them remains on their team’s books for the duration of the contracted term. The stretch provision allows teams to waive a player and then spread that player’s cap hit over additional seasons at a lesser annual value.

This led to the Nets paying Williams $5.5 million dollars a year for the past five seasons. I'm not sure how these things work so is it one lump sum check for the $5.5 million (please don't yell at me, Tax Time aficionados)? Was it broken down monthly for 12 easy payments of $458,333.33? Did he get a check every two weeks as we do, only his was for $211,538.46? He made over $15,000 per day to not play for the Brooklyn Nets. For five years. He was the 190th highest-paid player in the NBA this season and he hasn't suited up since June 2017.

To make things even better, he immediately signed with the Maverick where he made around $9 million dollars for 107 games of work WHILE he was still getting his stipends from the Nets. After Dallas waived him, he signed with Cleveland for the minimum…meaning he was getting paid by three different NBA teams to give 20 minutes per game off the bench for the Cavs. Salute a finesser when you see him.