CLEVELAND, Ohio -- There are plenty of ways to summarize Deron Williams' strong, perhaps surprising, first-round series against the Indiana Pacers.

Including from LeBron James: "He's getting back to being D-Will."

What that means, and what we saw from Williams in the four-game sweep of the Pacers, was a former All-Star coming off the bench and turning in a highly efficient 15.5 minutes per contest.

As a matter of fact, the Pacers couldn't keep up with Williams on Cleveland's second unit. He averaged 8.5 points and didn't commit a single turnover. He shot 10-of-13 from the field and 7-of-9 from 3-point range.

Or, as James said, "when (Williams has) got that right to left crossover and that left to right crossover, he's pulling up threes off pick and rolls with no hesitation, he's getting to the lane"... that's him getting back to being D-Will.

Since the playoffs began, Williams and the Cavs have put forth the better versions of themselves.

"I feel like I've had a little bit over two months now and I've adjusted and figured things out," Williams said after Sunday's 106-102 win in Game 4. Williams scored 14 points in 13 minutes in the game.

The hullabaloo over Williams' Round 1 performance stems from how rocky things were for him and the Cavs since he signed here as a free agent at the end of February.

The Cavs waited for the Dallas Mavericks to buy him out of his contract and pounced in adding him as maybe the perfect veteran backup to Kyrie Irving, someone who could finally take some pressure off James with the second unit.

While Williams' numbers in 24 games with the Cavs weren't terrible (7.5 points, 3.6 assists, 1.7 turnovers per game), the team went 10-14 and Williams' impact was negligible.

Cleveland saw a player who was a step slow after missing time in Dallas with an injury, and one who struggled defensively -- which made him difficult to pair with Irving.

Then in Cleveland's second-to-last game of the season, with James, Irving and Kevin Love out, Williams started at point guard and exploded for 35 points, nine assists and seven rebounds (and 10 turnovers) in an overtime loss at Miami.

It may have been a jumping-off point for what the Cavs are seeing from Williams now.

"The Miami game definitely helped because it was a game where I was just trying to be aggressive, go back to kind of playing the way I'm used to," Williams said. "It definitely kind of helped me jump start and get my confidence back a little bit because the games before that I wasn't getting many attempts, many looks, was kind of fooling around.

"When I do that I kind of lose confidence, so the Miami game was definitely helpful."

In addition to his trouble adjusting to life as a backup (he started all 40 games for Dallas this season), Williams was also struggling with the perpetual losing. He joined the defending champion with the idea of getting back to the Finals, and that might very well happen, but it was hard to imagine while the team suffered through separate losing skids of five of seven games in March and four in a row to end the season.

"It was definitely frustrating coming over and then losing," Williams said. "Couldn't really figure out how to get going. And I think any time you're losing, it just makes it worse. If you're winning, everything's good. We'd been losing, had a losing record since I was there. So, it was a struggle at first but there were some wins were you definitely knew what we could do."

Williams said "I think for this team, just being on the other end of it, and then being with them, it's hard to stay locked in for 82 games when you've been playing into June four, five years in a row. It's hard to get up for teams that are not playing for anything."

Williams' best game scoring against the Pacers was Sunday, but he played a crucial role in Thursday's improbable comeback from 25 points down at halftime to win Game 3. He was a part of the group of reserves whom coach Tyronn Lue played with James the entire fourth quarter.

Williams finished that game with five points and two assists. But he defended and made the extra pass.

"Every day he's getting more and more comfortable with what we want to do," James said. "We needed him. We're happy we got him."