Golden State Warriors' Reggie Williams is living his dream by playing in NBA

Last year, forward Reggie Williams spent Christmas in his apartment in Sioux Falls, S.D.

In the morning, he walked through a foot of snow to buy groceries from a Wal-Mart across the street. He and roommate Leemire Goldwire, his teammate in the NBA Development League, cooked and ate Christmas dinner together. By that evening, they were glued to the couch waiting for the tipoff of the Denver-Portland game on ESPN, dreaming about the day they would get their shots in the NBA.

"It seems like just yesterday," Williams, 24, said. "Now, I'm spending Christmas in California, in beautiful weather and about to play on national TV. My family can watch me play."

This time last year, Williams was an overlooked star in the D-League, watching other D-Leaguers get called up to the big show ahead of him.

"My dream was to play in the NBA," Williams said. "So for me to play on Christmas Day and on national TV, that's a pretty big achievement."

Williams certainly has jumped at his opportunity. He went undrafted in 2008 out of Virginia Military Institute, played a season with the French club Dijon and then joined the D-League and was called up by the Warriors in March 2010. He is still 30 games shy of a full NBA season, yet he is a key reserve for the Warriors. Williams has emerged as one of the top second-year players in the league and one of the Warriors' offensive weapons, averaging 11.6 points and 25.0 minutes per game.

Williams is likely to see a decrease in playing time, however. He has started the past six games and averaged 18.2 points in 37 minutes while point guard Stephen Curry recovered from a sprained right ankle.

But Curry is expected to return tonight.

Notes: The team hired Lloyd Pierce as an assistant coach to replace Stephen Silas, who left the Warriors to be the top assistant to his father, Paul Silas, in Charlotte. Pierce, 34, was player-development coordinator during Mike Brown's final three seasons as coach of Cleveland. A San Jose native, Pierce played at Santa Clara University