BOSTON -- Deron Williams, having not played in a game in more than two weeks before the Dallas Mavericks went all-in on their youth movement, was under the impression he would play only 10-12 minutes Wednesday as he dipped his toes into the Cleveland Cavaliers' waters for the first time.
He ended up playing all but eight seconds of the fourth quarter in a thrilling 103-99 loss to the Boston Celtics that had players in both locker rooms marveling at the playoff-type intensity of the game.
Not only did he log all those minutes, but he found the ball in his hands for Cleveland's biggest shot of the night -- a potential game-winning corner 3-pointer with five seconds left and the Cavs down by two.
The feed came from LeBron James, who turned down a contested 3 of his own on the right wing to provide Williams what Cavs coach Tyronn Lue likes to call a "butt naked" shot, meaning a wide-open one, which Lue says Cleveland's offense generates so often.
But his shot lipped out.
"It was a great moment. It was set up perfect," Williams said. "I did everything but make it."
Williams' welcome-to-the-Cavs moment might have been marred by a loss, but his sudden surge in fourth-quarter minutes was a microcosm of what the final 23 games of the regular season are going to be about for Cleveland: integration and experimentation.
"We're pretty deep, and the biggest thing is just trying to get everyone to mesh together and [see] who plays well together and who doesn't," Lue said at the morning shootaround. "So that's going to be the biggest challenge the next few weeks, especially getting J.R. [Smith] back and then with Kevin [Love] coming back. So it's going to be a process, but I'm pretty sure we can figure it out."
It's a great problem to have, of course. Lue will get to play mad scientist with different lineup combinations at different times. In just the last couple of weeks he unearthed a gem of a five-man unit in James, Derrick Williams, Kyle Korver, Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye.
What about a fourth-quarter lineup of James, Smith, Korver, Love and Kyrie Irving? Who is going to stop them from scoring?
What about a switch-everything defensive combination of James, Smith, Derrick Williams, Iman Shumpert and Tristan Thompson?
What possibilities will present themselves when Andrew Bogut is added to the mix, and he is spraying the ball out to shooters off post-entry feeds?
Cleveland's hodgepodge crunch-time lineup Wednesday, in a road game against the No. 2 team in the conference no less, wasn't just a chance for Deron Williams to learn on the fly, but for all five players to learn each other and play off one another's instincts.
If you have fundamentally smart, skilled, unselfish players, why not mix them up and see what they can create?
"D-Will has been around, so he can execute those plays," Lue said of the former Mavs guard's baptism by fire. "They were small, so we were just running pick-and-roll, trying to get a switch like they were trying to do and take advantage of the mismatch. As long as we're playing like that, we weren't really calling any plays. We're trying to look out for mismatches, and we were able to do that."
Said James: "We're a flow team. When we've got a good flow going, we'll continue to do that."
There will be an ebb and flow to the lineup over the next several weeks. Smith joined Cleveland on its three-game road trip, marking the first time he has traveled with the team since hurting his right thumb in December. He's close. As is Bogut, who could sign as soon as Thursday. Love will be back by the end of the month, too.
"It didn't dawn on me until just now," Irving said of the reinforcements on the way. "I'm just saying, it's crazy. I don't want to say I forgot about them, but I'm just like, yeah, we actually do have two other guys that we're still missing that we still got to get into the flow of things when we get back healthy. So we got to get better. We got to get better. And we will."
They'll do it in the games, using each one as a sort of dress rehearsal for the playoffs with the understudies sometimes playing the lead roles. They have to use games, because, well, as Deron Williams put it so bluntly, "They really don't practice here, and they told me that coming in."
It's why it was a downright joyous postgame locker room for the Cavs, even though James' seventh triple-double of the season (tying his career high for a season) went to waste, and even though the loss snapped a previously unblemished 15-0 road record on the season when holding a lead in the fourth quarter, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
"We're not where we want to be, but it's great to see what we have right now," James said. "What we have right now, we're playing some pretty good ball."
