The Grant Williams I remember got into opponents’ faces. He stepped up to superstars like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jimmy Butler and didn’t back down. And sometimes, it can get a little rough.
With Williams now playing for the Hornets, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he absolutely trucked Jayson Tatum late in the fourth quarter in what would end up being a blowout in Charlotte last night.
The fourth quarter had gotten a little chippy. With the Celtics up 1, head coach Joe Mazzulla drew a technical foul after a questionable Neemias Queta offensive foul on a screen. Minutes later, former Celtics assistant coach and current Hornets head coach Charles Lee picked up a T, too. And then with the game decided in the closing minutes, Williams, in Jaylen Brown’s post-game description, “hit him like it was a football play — Ray Lewis coming across the middle or something.”
Derrick White added,“He’s too damn big to be doing stuff like that.”
In the moment, Brown took umbrage with his former teammate’s rough play and defended Tatum, but Mazzulla was impressed with how Tatum handled it in the end. “What I liked most is how he jumped right up. Didn’t lay around. Didn’t really phase him. Just went right up, went to the free throw line, and did his business,” Mazzulla said.
After the game, NBC Sports Boston’s Kayla Burton caught up with Williams for his explanation of what would eventually be deemed a Flagrant-2. “I think it was more so he didn’t see me more than anything else. I definitely made contact with his body before I reached. Probably a hard foul, but definitely not intentional,” Williams said.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt him by any means. We all know that he’s one of my closest friends in the league. As you see, he got up and just walked away and I got up, asked for help, raised my hand. I thought it was a foul. JB kinda escalated it, but I understand he was trying to protect his teammates and stuff like that. That’s my dawg. No matter what, I got his back.”
Williams said that he had plans of having the team over for dinner, but assumed that that wasn’t happening now. Here’s more video from CelticsBlog’s and CLNS Media’s Bobby Manning:
For Brown however, actions speak louder than words. “I don’t know what that was about. I think that spoke for itself. I don’t know if Grant missed JT or — I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t a basketball play. Grant knows better than that.”
Misunderstanding or not, it’s just one game in an 82-game season. The defending champs will get everybody’s best shot, whether that’s a team trying to match them three-pointer for three pointer or in last night’s case, ratcheting up the physicality and taking shoulder shots in transition.
“It’s brings a side of our team out that we need. It adds another dimension to our team and that’s what we need to continue to win games at a high level,” Brown said. “You need a little edge. You need a little chippiness. You need a little fight in you.”
