"His mother's tears and a kid's rebuke made the biggest impact on Terrence Williams during his recent exile to the D-League.

Williams, who practiced with the Nets yesterday and will be in the rotation tonight against the scorching Mavericks, sounded like a totally different person than the guy demoted to Springfield after repeatedly being late with the Nets.

He admitted after he heard the news of first being inactive for two games (he was told to stay away) then being shipped out to a team that practices at the YMCA, he thought he was in a "dream." Then reality hit.

"I went to sleep and thought it was a dream. And that's the honest truth," Williams said. "I knew it wasn't a dream when my mom called me."

And his mom was crying, thinking her son had been banished from the NBA. That was the first real slap to Williams' pride, ego, whatever it is that gets affected and hopefully changes a 23-year-old for the better.

"What drove it home was my mother crying. My mom didn't cry in I don't know how many years," said Williams, who flew here Tuesday when the Nets dropped a fifth straight game in a no-defense loss at Atlanta. "She thought I was out of the NBA for good. I had to explain to her the situation. Her crying really got to me."

So did a 12-year-old, one of the ball boys for the Springfield Armor. The kid saw Williams as a basketball hero and told him that. And he also told Williams, essentially, he was being a numbskull. The kid stunned Williams when he asked him, "Why would you want to blow" an NBA career?"