NBA Finals are a reminder of Grant Williams’ missed opportunity originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
Grant Williams is in the news this week. On Monday, He will be the featured speaker at the Middle Tennessee High School Sports Awards. honoring the best student athletes in the Volunteer State. It’s the brand of civic-minded Williams, whose mother is a NASA engineer.
It should also be said that Grant Williams is not in the news this week. When The Mavericks and Celtics begin Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday night.Williams will not wear either uniform, even though he recently wore both.
Between the big and small stories of this Final — The return of Kyrie Irving, Luka Doncic vs. Jayson Tatum, Kristaps Porzingis vs. his old team… there’s also this: it’s a battle between two clubs who decided they would be better off without Williams. One of them is going to win it all.
The Celtics made this decision last summer when they reorganized their roster and let Williams leave in restricted free agency via sign-and-trade deal.
The contract year many of us were hoping for never materialized, so it wasn’t a difficult decision. Williams’ last great moment in a Celtics uniform was decidedly dubious, as gawking at Heat All-Star Jimmy Butler before the latter took over Game 2 of the conference finals to give Miami a commanding lead.
The Mavericks were not deterred. They signed the burly forward to a four-year, $54 million contract, envisioning him as a tough, experienced addition to their frontcourt alongside MVP candidate Luka Doncic.
It didn’t work. williams He supposedly appeared out of shape but with his mouth intact, which won’t surprise anyone who’s seen him bark throughout his Celtics career. What was largely endearing here (former teammate Jayson Tatum clearly loved him) proved irritating in Dallas and the Mavericks sent him to his hometown Hornets for PJ Washington as part of a mid-season roster rebuild. season that propelled his run to the Finals.
That leaves Williams in an awkward position. Not only is he not playing, but if he wants a ring, he will have to support the team that fired him in February. Given his longest and happiest ties to the Celtics, it wouldn’t be surprising if he supports former teammates like Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Al Horford, but he can only earn one Mavericks ring.
Celtics Talk: A special Celtics reunion in 2008 and keys to the Celtics-Mavericks NBA Finals | Listen and subscribe | Watch on YouTube
Let the record show that Williams was the author of some legitimately great moments in a Celtics uniform, none greater than his seven triples in Game 7 to eliminate the Bucks en route to the 2022 NBA Finals. The Celtics lost to the Warriors, but it seemed possible that Williams would carve out a Draymond Green-type role in Boston as an instigator and big-bodied defender.
Instead, Williams fell out of head coach Joe Mazzulla’s rotation with inconsistent effort. He was benched for the first time last March and earned five DNPs in the playoffs. When he finished the season, he suspected his days in Boston were numbered, effectively confirming the pre-draft trade for former Mavs big man Kristaps Porzingis.
So next week he will return to Tennessee, where he was a first-team All-American in college, and contribute to his community. Williams was many things in Boston: affable, loquacious and sometimes frustrating, but he was never a champion.
His former teammates – on both sides – will try to finish that job without him.
