Nets point guard Deron Williams has narrowed down the list of potential teams he will sign with this summer to include Brooklyn and the Mavs, reports Marc Stein of ESPN.com. The former Jazz star will become a free agent at midnight July 1 and has drawn attention from countless teams across the league. Williams, however, has instructed his representatives to inform teams that contact him that he will either re-sign with the Nets or return home to Dallas to play for the Mavs. The Nets can offer Williams a five-year, $100MM extension whereas the Mavs are limited to presenting the All-Star guard with a four-year, $75MM deal.
"I want to go to a place where I feel like they will have a chance to build and build fast," Williams told the Los Angeles Times. "I'm not really in the mood for being part of a rebuilding process. I'm getting older. I'm about to be 28. I want to win. I want to win now. Also, I want to live in a place where I want to live and my kids will enjoy living. That's pretty much it."
With Williams concerned about his prospective team's ability to win immediately, the current outlooks for the Nets and Mavs vary greatly. For Brooklyn, success heading into the 2012/13 season will be predicated on re-signing Gerald Wallace, getting a healthy Brook Lopez back into the mix and continuing to make efforts to trade for Dwight Howard. For Dallas, owner Mark Cuban will be tasked with selling Williams on Dirk Nowitzki's championship experience and the notion that it may be easier to reach the Finals coming out of the Western Conference, which sounds like a highly-debatable talking point at best.
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