CHARLOTTE — Jaylen Brown called the hit intentional, for sure. Derrick White was surprised by it, saying the entire Celtics team was too. Jayson Tatum did not speak post game after receiving the blow, despite scoring 32 points in 36 minutes on Friday. He jumped to his feet, exited the growing scrum and walked to the free throw line.
Yet Grant Williams, who spoke multiple times about the flagrant two foul he committed on Tatum in the fourth quarter after, referred to the play as an accident while making a play on the ball. He called Tatum one of his best friends, explained Brown’s agitated response as him simply defending his teammate and smiled predicting that they’d all be cool. Speaking to NBC Sports Boston while exiting the arena, though, he at least half-joked about former teammates no longer joining him for a planned dinner at his house.
“We talked last night, just because I was going to invite them over to my house,” Williams said at shootaround on Friday. “But I told them I had a date night with my girl. Let’s just say that trumps them, but … I talk to J.T. after the game and stuff like that. I try not to bother them before these games, the same way I don’t think they try and bother me. After we play, we’ll talk a lot. We might hang out tonight, just because we have a back-to-back, it’s a unique situation. They don’t stay the night on Saturday, so after tonight’s game, maybe, and then Saturday, we’ll just dap up and go our separate ways.”
The play put the Celtics in a difficult position, needing to back up their teammate against a former one who became an equally important and annoying voice from 2019-2023. Tatum and Williams seemed close despite Tatum rolling his eyes at Williams’ self-proclaimed Batman nickname. Brown notably deemed his head-butting with Jimmy Butler during the 2023 east finals unnecessary. Like Ime Udoka did before him, Brown stressed that Williams can be a valuable contributor to a team when he’s locked into his narrow yet important role.
Wanting to expand beyond that marked the beginning of the end of his time with Boston the previous summer. The Celtics and Williams, while motivated to re-sign Williams, couldn’t agree to a deal before the rookie scale deadline, Boston reportedly offering a four-year contract worth around $50 million. After an uneven season where he tried too often to create off the dribble and garnered several DNP-CDs from Joe Mazzulla during his first year, Williams departed the Celtics for Dallas in a sign-and-trade worth $54 million. The Mavericks traded him to the Hornets midway through his first year there, and eventually reached the Finals against his former Boston team.
“I think it’s part of life,” Williams told CLNS Media/CelticsBlog late last season. “You go through things and things happen for a reason. Going back and looking at what I could or couldn’t control, you can’t operate that way. You have to look toward the future and look to how you can either prevent things from happening the way they happened again, or come prepared and even better the next time.”
Williams found a home in his native Charlotte, playing center often and shooting 37.3% from three under Steve Clifford before Charles Lee became head coach in June. Williams led a trip to the NBA Finals with Brandon Miller and Mark Williams, where he popped into the post game locker room celebration. During and after the series, he’s expressed happiness for his former teammates reaching the big stage, and Boston winning, despite his departure being part of their stories.
Now, he’s shooting 45.8% from deep to begin this season and drained a game-winning three on opening night against Houston. His voice and approach might resonate more on a younger Charlotte team, though scenes of him on the floor complaining to officials — a common fault when he played in Boston — shouting at teammates and his hard foul contrast against his persona off the floor. He gives reporters more time than maybe any other player in the league, dedicates as many hours to team community efforts as anyone and is one of the WNBA’s most vocal supporters, among his other admirable traits. His peers voted him as a NBPA vice president.
Something seems to shift during the intensity of the game, to the point where he didn’t fully realize what he did wrong on Friday. White noted he’s too big to be committing hard fouls. And in that moment, whether intentional or not, Williams found himself in a familiar territory. In trouble for doing too much.
“Something that we’ll learn and grow from,” Lee said. “Because we need those guys on the court. I don’t want those guys to put themselves in positions where they’re gonna hurt themselves and their teammates … I think some of that passion he plays with has helped us in a lot of moments this year…as we prepare and practice and he brings a great energy and a bounce and a juice…because he has so much passion and he’s fearless…he takes on a lot of different matchups. So I don’t want him to lose that. I just want him to harness it in a way that we can keep him on the court.”
