How Celtics’ Grant Williams grew into key role: ‘Dammit, you gotta love him’
Grant Williams wanted to make a strong first impression on Danny Ainge. Sitting in Ainge’s office just after being drafted by the Celtics, Williams peered out the window and spotted a blank banner hanging in the corner of the Auerbach Center.
Puzzled why there was this empty stretch of canvas hiding in plain sight among a sea of 17 championship banners, he thought for a second and the first word to come out of his mouth as a Celtic was, “Why?”
Ainge, Boston’s president of basketball operations at the time, explained the symbolism, the history and the goal. He had been a part of raising those banners as a player and an executive. He had seen everything it took to get there.
Williams, who had just been selected 22nd in the 2019 NBA Draft out of Tennessee, grinned with a naive yet assured optimism and simply told him, “I’m gonna get you that banner.”
“I knew from my life that’s the one goal that I had and it’s not even the MVPs or anything else, it was that Banner 18 for the Celtics franchise,” Williams says with conviction. “That’s something I feel like that we both understood with one another, that’s the number one goal. From the beginning, that was my way of cementing history with this franchise and my way of doing it with the team.”
Ainge laughs remembering the moment a 20-year-old role player, on his first day in the building, declaring he was going to deliver him a title. The now Utah Jazz CEO doesn’t recall exactly what his response was, but there certainly were some chuckles. “I probably would have told him, like, you got a long way to go son and you got to get better on defense and become a better shooter. Probably told him all those things. But I think that he’s put in the time and work.”
As last postseason carried on, it looked like the work was finally paying off. Williams was becoming the defender and shooter Ainge called for as he helped propel the Celtics to the Finals, then struggled to find a role as his team lost in six games to the Warriors. Now as he recovers from a bruising playoff run and looks ahead to extension talks this offseason, he finally has a clear grasp of what it takes to win at the highest level.
“At the end of the day, you can’t ask anyone to bail you out,” Williams says. “It’s the Finals, you can’t expect anything to be given to you. You have to go out there and take it if you really want it.”
Coming into his sophomore season in Boston, Williams thought he was ready for more. The whole Celtics roster thought it was.
He had some triumphant moments in the 2020 NBA playoffs bubble that positioned him for a breakout second year, but then he showed up to training camp simply not ready. Ainge saw him playing without the same effort that kept him on the court for the fourth quarter of a Game 7 win against Toronto, which earned him a matchup against Bam Adebayo in the conference finals, and knew Williams needed a wake-up call.
“I remember having to challenge him at that time, going, ‘Do you understand that you got to do it every day?” says Ainge. “Like, that’s who you are, you have to go out every day and prove yourself. You can’t feel comfortable and feel like you’ve made it. You got to work and work and work.’”
Part of his problem was his size. Williams played at 280 pounds in high school and worked his way down to 265 when he enrolled at Tennessee. He arrived on campus, stepped into the Volunteers’ “Bod Pod,” and was immediately thrown into coach Rick Barnes’ infamous fat camp.
By the time he made it to the draft combine three years later, he was down to 240. But when Ainge selected him and informed Williams he needed to bulk back up to play some center, he had trouble adding weight while staying in peak shape his rookie season. That was apparent during the 2020 preseason, when his conditioning and intensity were clearly lacking.
“’You gotta prove to your coaches that you even belong on the court,’” Ainge says he told Williams. “‘You’ve gotta prove to your teammates that you are worthy of minutes that you’re getting and trust that they can throw the ball to you at times of the game. That you’re going to be reliable, that you’re going to be there to cover them when they get beat on a dribble. You gotta prove yourself every day.’ He kind of looked at me and was a little bit taken aback, but I really thought from that moment on, he really elevated his work and his commitment for the rest of that second year.”
Ainge reminded Williams that even though he had surpassed Semi Ojeleye in the playoff rotation the year prior, it didn’t mean he had a guaranteed spot. The then-GM told him, “You’re not even good right now,” saying it was as if he were on cruise control. Williams was an intangibles guy and a worker on the floor, but his in-game persistence and temperament wasn’t carrying over to the work off the court.
“I remember those words and I remember that I came into this past training camp saying that no matter what, I’m taking everything seriously with the utmost intent,” Williams says. “Not just the physicality side of things, but playing balls to the wall, even if it’s preseason.”
Williams still had plenty to figure out from a skill and personnel perspective in his second season, but that switch was flipped in his brain. He was locking back in and trying to make sense of it all.
What was going to make or break his career was his defensive versatility. His spot-up shooting was becoming just good enough to keep him in the rotation, but new coach Ime Udoka was bringing a switching defense to town and Williams needed to evolve quickly. He wanted to grow from being a big who could handle various defensive tasks to a true switchable defender who could take on any assignment.
“Me and my old coach (Brandon Bailey) discussed being a guy who contains players versus a guy who is affecting them,” Williams said. “Like the one that gets into them, makes them off balance. I think I have the foot speed — depending on the player — but you have to have foot speed to do both.
“I might not be Rob Williams and hang in the air in 10 seconds. But having the versatility to guard strength-wise and have lateral quickness, I feel like that’s athleticism.”
He hired a chef, overhauled his offseason workout program and showed up to camp noticeably slimmed down. Though he still weighed around 245 pounds, he had converted a significant amount of body fat into lean muscle. Now he was dunking in transition, beating drives to the rim to force missed layups and avoiding fatigue fouls as he got later into the game. He turned heads in the organization with how well he responded to his exit meeting months earlier, with Stevens later citing him as the paragon of an exemplary offseason after the Finals loss last month.
As Boston started to master its switching defense, Williams would get called up into isolation by opposing stars and hold his ground. He was finally agile and balanced enough to wall them off from the paint and stay with them when they pulled up to shoot.
“I did ballet and all this other stuff, so I feel like I would always stumble, but I wouldn’t fall,” says, Williams, who even had a solo in his senior year high school musical. “I don’t have the best body control, like Ja Morant, where you fly in the air and know exactly where you are and all that stuff. But I do a good job of not being out of stance a lot.”
Williams felt that his capability as a defender had far surpassed his reputation, so he relished every single time a ballhandler would wave him over for a clear-out. He ended up being one of 25 players to defend more than 100 isolations over the entirety of last season and ranked fourth in the fewest points per possession allowed, according to Synergy Sports.
He would see defenders think that because he wasn’t blocking shots or getting steals, that he was an easy bucket. Williams would get hit with a crossover or a forearm shove, stumble, yet still stay in the play. It wasn’t pretty, but it was subtly effective.
“Then you miss three in a row and you’re like, ‘Dang, like, am I just missing, or is there a reason?’” says Williams.
That consistency on defense and improved shooting resulted in a steady increase in his minutes as the season wore on and the Celtics ascended the standings. Udoka whittled down the big-man rotation to trust Williams with a larger role to take on key starters throughout the game.
He had finally gotten to the point within the organization that he could get yelled at by the coach or a teammate — which still happens often — then be thrown right back into the fire.
“To be able to say I guarded Joel Embiid and Trae Young in back-to-back games, that’s kind of cool to look back to,” Williams says. “Even in the beginning of the season, when (I was) in and out of rotation, still trying to gain trust with the coach, once you develop that trust, you haven’t lost it. The proud moment is when you’re at the point where you have a rough game, and the next day you’re still trusted to bounce back.”
The catalog of defensive performances against key players was growing deep, he was shooting on command, and all the chicanery now seemed to add to the body of work, rather than distract from it.
“We love Grant for everything he brings to this team, on and off the court,” Marcus Smart says. “He understands that he’s him and he’s not changing for anybody and that’s what we love about him. He’s going to be himself no matter what.”
It’s April Fools’ Day and the Boston media contingent is gathered for an impromptu press conference, but nobody knows what for this time. Players don’t take the podium before games. They’re too busy getting warmed up, locked in, or scrolling Instagram. But Williams has convened the press corp to a room covered with posters detailing his teammates’ defensive achievements.
Williams sits downs and announces the unofficial Celtics All-Defense campaign, delivering the stump speech for each member of the starting lineup. He pledges to dye his hair green if they all make it (they won’t). He’ll take some credit for at least getting Smart and Rob Williams on there.
This is his day to shine. Williams is always looking to be the loveable goofball, whether it’s to break the monotony, lift spirits or diffuse tension. At shootaround that morning, the chemistry that had brought the team out of the Eastern Conference basement looked like it was about to unravel for a brief moment.
Grant Williams is used to coaches laying into him his whole career, from Barnes to Brad Stevens to Udoka. His teammates love chiding him and he always embraces leaning into the joke.
When he would precede Udoka at the podium during a shootaround, Udoka would jokingly talk trash or respond to Williams warmly, saying, “Hi” with a quiet, “Shut up.” Grant’s pregame routine included half-heartedly defending jumpers from one of his closest friends on the team, Jayson Tatum, like the little one at the family cookout trying to hoop with the big kids.
“I think Grant likes it, man. Grant is like that little brother that everybody wishes they had,” Smart says. “Then you want to get into it with him and you’re like, ‘Dammit, you gotta love him.’ But that’s who Grant is.”
But after Williams garnered a beloved underdog rep in the bubble, a portion of the Boston fanbase soured on him as he struggled to find his footing in his second year. His shooting was inconsistent, he was mistake-prone and fouled as much as he got stops on defense.
Entering the 2021-22 season, Williams was in open competition for the backup four spot with Juancho Hernangomez, who now remains a free agent after Ainge’s Jazz waived him last month. Though it seemed like an easy choice in hindsight, there was support for Hernangomez to be in the rotation instead.
“It’s bound to happen, that’s how life works. People are going to be on you when you’re down and be with you when you’re up. I never took it personally,” Williams says. “If Boston fans were okay with me not performing, I would be disappointed in them. I feel like they hold me to a higher standard and I hold myself to a higher standard in life. So I’m just excited to be in the market that’s going to do the same for me as I do for myself.”
As much as Williams loves to run his mouth with his teammates or embrace public criticism, he does the most talking with the refs. He’s an undersized big whose physicality is his greatest defensive asset, so that made him a foul machine in his first two seasons. Half of the challenge of even getting minutes was being able to stay on the floor without fouling out.
So he made it a point last season to navigate his relationship with the officials and get the whistle he needed to play the way he wanted. Every dead ball, every timeout, he’d be deep in conversation with one official, then work another five minutes later. Every other time he would get called for a foul, he would try to wipe the abject shock off his face to thoroughly explain his rationale.
“There’s been times where I gotta tap him to take him away from the ref,” Rob Williams said. “He’s always talking to the damn ref after everything. Thirty minutes later, he’s still talking to the ref.”
Though much of his defensive improvement is a result of better positioning to make legal contact, he found himself getting more of a benefit of the doubt than he saw in years past.
“It’s just a matter of being honest and respectful,” says Williams. “I feel like referees, anyone in life, if you communicate with them in the right context, they’ll hopefully listen and understand. If you come at them irate or giving them too much drama or showing them up, that’s when you start seeing a little bit of gray area.”
He needed that gray area for this past postseason run, serving as one of the Celtics’ primary defenders against Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jimmy Butler and Adebayo en route to the NBA Finals. At this point of the season, he was no longer the isolation target offenses were hunting. He was the defensive specialist teams wanted to avoid.
“I was the guy they didn’t want in actions and that’s what was super, super humbling for me,” Williams says. “I was like, dang, I remember back in the day where guys would point to me and say, ‘Bring him up.’ Now it’s like, ‘Nah, wave him down, leave him there. Bring the next guy and make them come up.’”
But things went south in the Finals. He no longer was facing a team building around a star trying to bulldoze into the paint, and he felt Steph Curry persistently targeting him. His frustration with the officials was affecting his focus.
Udoka spent the playoff run telling his team to stop complaining and maintain focus, particularly ahead of the elimination Game 6. The players kept emphasizing it as they saw their 2-1 finals lead flip.
“We can’t rely on anybody else, whether it’s the fans, whether it’s the officials, whether it’s the other team,” Williams says ahead of Game 6. “You have to go out there and approach it as if this is the last thing toward my ultimate goal and this is what I really care wholely and solely about.”
Of course, the whistle remained tight, the Garden crowd couldn’t fuel Boston’s tired legs and the Warriors made sure that blank banner hanging in the Celtics’ practice facility remained untouched. For Williams, and the Celtics, there was still another level to hit.
While Williams’ defensive versatility has been his calling card, the Warriors proved he still has to open up his offensive game. He found his offensive role as a floor spacer earlier in the year, finally becoming a knock-down shooter from the corners and being able to make passes when attacking closeouts to keep the offense flowing.
He was one of the league’s best stationary spot-up shooters, hitting 44.7 percent of his 3s over the first 60 games of the season. It was a triumph for a player who missed the first 25 attempts of his career.
“We understood that the way I was gonna improve is based off my shooting, and I was a good shooter, but I didn’t shoot with confidence my second year,” says Williams. “Like, I was shooting (37.2) percent during that season, but I wasn’t shooting a lot of them. I was shot faking or hesitating my shots that were open. I probably should have shot but I didn’t. So it was more so getting the shot off quicker with more confidence and then the rest of the game kind of comes through that.”
Then, suddenly, over the final five weeks of the regular season, nothing was falling. As the playoffs went on, he would alternate hot and cold nights, but his defense was keeping him in there.
After he tied Curry’s and Marcus Morris’ Game 7 record with seven 3s to take down Milwaukee in the second round, he hit five threes in his last 10 playoff games against Miami and Golden State. The same slump he hit in April, which took him out of the running for the NBA 3-point crown, had returned at the worst time. But even when Williams would come away empty, Udoka kept going to him and his teammates kept believing in him.
It all led to a Game 7 against the Bucks where Milwaukee dared him to take anything he wanted, as he continued to miss. He obliged, launching a Game 7 record 18 shots from deep, with enough going down to secure an easy win.
“He’s got to be a confident shooter for his coaches and players to trust him. After missing two, don’t be hesitant on the third,” Ainge says. “I thought that was the epitome of his Game 7 (against Milwaukee). That was the true test, right? You’re at the crucial moment and you’re shooting and you’re not making shots and you’re passing up a couple of shots. That’s exactly all he’s been preparing for.”
While his defense again proved crucial against Miami, he struggled to find another way to contribute on offense versus the Warriors. He was stuck in a bad personnel matchup on defense, and saw his minutes dwindle.
He knew his defensive kryptonite was quick guards who could pull up to shoot from anywhere. He understood the Warriors could take away his corner 3s and cut off his passing angles. They had every answer.
“The thing I learned about the Finals is the discipline side of things,” Williams says. “Everybody that makes it to the Finals is there for a reason and you have to be able to impact both sides of the ball and I felt that discipline the Warriors showed was the reason why they beat us. Less so about talent or anything else, because I felt like as a team, we are the most talented team in the league. So we just have to be a little better disciplined and understand exactly what we need to reach for this upcoming season.”
So on a team that fell two wins short of the ultimate goal and has reloaded with the additions of Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari, how will Williams continue to grow with this organization? He is entering the final year of his rookie deal and is eligible for a contract extension, so that question will determine whether he locks in his future now.
The team has initiated talks, even as Stevens’ front office continues to fill open roster spots and the rest of the trade and free-agent market takes shape. Though recent deals for Brogdon and Derrick White have loaded up Boston’s cap sheet the next three seasons, Al Horford’s sizeable contract comes off the books next summer.
Williams will be seeking a deal akin to a core rotation player who could earn a starting spot on a contender in the near future. Finding a number that works for both parties will be tough to define considering Rob Williams’ recent extension pays him an annual average value of $13 million, even after making an all-defensive team. Meanwhile, in this year’s market, a veteran 3-and-D role player in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope inked a $15 million annual average value extension with Denver, while P.J. Tucker, a frequent comp for Grant Williams, received $11 million annually.
But, of course, Williams is 14 years younger than Tucker and is still early in his development curve. The NBPA expects the salary cap to jump another 10 percent next season, so prospective market inflation factors into future extensions being negotiated this summer.
Boston has managed to extend the recent first-round picks it hasn’t traded early, with Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Rob Williams all working out deals. Rob Williams signed below market value, knowing he was going to ascend into the starting lineup permanently, and health has been a major concern. Brown took a below-max deal, then made his first All-Star team and is certainly underpaid.
“Just making sure that the extension works for both sides. My number one focus is winning,” says Williams. “You take care of the good guys. You take care of the guys that provide value to your team, both on and off the floor. I feel like the Celtics are feeling the same way. I’m not too stressed about the negotiations because I feel like both parties want to get a deal done.”
Williams says he wants to finish his career in Boston and is grateful for everything Ainge and Stevens have done for him. He has to stay. He still owes his former boss.
“Grant, he loves to talk big and I got a kick out of his personality. But a lot of young guys, that’s what they think they’re gonna do, they’re gonna win that championship, and they have those kinds of goals in their minds,” Ainge says. “Some of them work hard to do everything they can to accomplish those goals and I think Grant is one of those guys that has put in the work.”
He may be a role player, but he wants to be a star in his role. Ainge is not with the Celtics anymore, but Williams’ promise to bring him another banner was not just to the man who drafted him. It’s also to the organization and the city that, after a bumpy road, have come to embrace him.
“When you see me walk to the 3-point line and size up the crowd, I’m standing there looking up at those banners, because that’s the number one goal,” Williams says. “That’s the number one driver for me and something that I want to add to, ’cause I feel like we’re missing a couple up there.”
How Celtics’ Grant Williams grew into key role: ‘Dammit, you gotta love him’
Grant Williams wanted to make a strong first impression on Danny Ainge. Sitting in Ainge’s office just after being drafted by the Celtics, Williams peered out the window and spotted a blank banner hanging in the corner of the Auerbach Center.
Puzzled why there was this empty stretch of canvas hiding in plain sight among a sea of 17 championship banners, he thought for a second and the first word to come out of his mouth as a Celtic was, “Why?”
Ainge, Boston’s president of basketball operations at the time, explained the symbolism, the history and the goal. He had been a part of raising those banners as a player and an executive. He had seen everything it took to get there.
Williams, who had just been selected 22nd in the 2019 NBA Draft out of Tennessee, grinned with a naive yet assured optimism and simply told him, “I’m gonna get you that banner.”
“I knew from my life that’s the one goal that I had and it’s not even the MVPs or anything else, it was that Banner 18 for the Celtics franchise,” Williams says with conviction. “That’s something I feel like that we both understood with one another, that’s the number one goal. From the beginning, that was my way of cementing history with this franchise and my way of doing it with the team.”
Ainge laughs remembering the moment a 20-year-old role player, on his first day in the building, declaring he was going to deliver him a title. The now Utah Jazz CEO doesn’t recall exactly what his response was, but there certainly were some chuckles. “I probably would have told him, like, you got a long way to go son and you got to get better on defense and become a better shooter. Probably told him all those things. But I think that he’s put in the time and work.”
As last postseason carried on, it looked like the work was finally paying off. Williams was becoming the defender and shooter Ainge called for as he helped propel the Celtics to the Finals, then struggled to find a role as his team lost in six games to the Warriors. Now as he recovers from a bruising playoff run and looks ahead to extension talks this offseason, he finally has a clear grasp of what it takes to win at the highest level.
“At the end of the day, you can’t ask anyone to bail you out,” Williams says. “It’s the Finals, you can’t expect anything to be given to you. You have to go out there and take it if you really want it.”
Coming into his sophomore season in Boston, Williams thought he was ready for more. The whole Celtics roster thought it was.
He had some triumphant moments in the 2020 NBA playoffs bubble that positioned him for a breakout second year, but then he showed up to training camp simply not ready. Ainge saw him playing without the same effort that kept him on the court for the fourth quarter of a Game 7 win against Toronto, which earned him a matchup against Bam Adebayo in the conference finals, and knew Williams needed a wake-up call.
“I remember having to challenge him at that time, going, ‘Do you understand that you got to do it every day?” says Ainge. “Like, that’s who you are, you have to go out every day and prove yourself. You can’t feel comfortable and feel like you’ve made it. You got to work and work and work.’”
Part of his problem was his size. Williams played at 280 pounds in high school and worked his way down to 265 when he enrolled at Tennessee. He arrived on campus, stepped into the Volunteers’ “Bod Pod,” and was immediately thrown into coach Rick Barnes’ infamous fat camp.
By the time he made it to the draft combine three years later, he was down to 240. But when Ainge selected him and informed Williams he needed to bulk back up to play some center, he had trouble adding weight while staying in peak shape his rookie season. That was apparent during the 2020 preseason, when his conditioning and intensity were clearly lacking.
“’You gotta prove to your coaches that you even belong on the court,’” Ainge says he told Williams. “‘You’ve gotta prove to your teammates that you are worthy of minutes that you’re getting and trust that they can throw the ball to you at times of the game. That you’re going to be reliable, that you’re going to be there to cover them when they get beat on a dribble. You gotta prove yourself every day.’ He kind of looked at me and was a little bit taken aback, but I really thought from that moment on, he really elevated his work and his commitment for the rest of that second year.”
Ainge reminded Williams that even though he had surpassed Semi Ojeleye in the playoff rotation the year prior, it didn’t mean he had a guaranteed spot. The then-GM told him, “You’re not even good right now,” saying it was as if he were on cruise control. Williams was an intangibles guy and a worker on the floor, but his in-game persistence and temperament wasn’t carrying over to the work off the court.
“I remember those words and I remember that I came into this past training camp saying that no matter what, I’m taking everything seriously with the utmost intent,” Williams says. “Not just the physicality side of things, but playing balls to the wall, even if it’s preseason.”
Williams still had plenty to figure out from a skill and personnel perspective in his second season, but that switch was flipped in his brain. He was locking back in and trying to make sense of it all.
What was going to make or break his career was his defensive versatility. His spot-up shooting was becoming just good enough to keep him in the rotation, but new coach Ime Udoka was bringing a switching defense to town and Williams needed to evolve quickly. He wanted to grow from being a big who could handle various defensive tasks to a true switchable defender who could take on any assignment.
“Me and my old coach (Brandon Bailey) discussed being a guy who contains players versus a guy who is affecting them,” Williams said. “Like the one that gets into them, makes them off balance. I think I have the foot speed — depending on the player — but you have to have foot speed to do both.
“I might not be Rob Williams and hang in the air in 10 seconds. But having the versatility to guard strength-wise and have lateral quickness, I feel like that’s athleticism.”
He hired a chef, overhauled his offseason workout program and showed up to camp noticeably slimmed down. Though he still weighed around 245 pounds, he had converted a significant amount of body fat into lean muscle. Now he was dunking in transition, beating drives to the rim to force missed layups and avoiding fatigue fouls as he got later into the game. He turned heads in the organization with how well he responded to his exit meeting months earlier, with Stevens later citing him as the paragon of an exemplary offseason after the Finals loss last month.
As Boston started to master its switching defense, Williams would get called up into isolation by opposing stars and hold his ground. He was finally agile and balanced enough to wall them off from the paint and stay with them when they pulled up to shoot.
“I did ballet and all this other stuff, so I feel like I would always stumble, but I wouldn’t fall,” says, Williams, who even had a solo in his senior year high school musical. “I don’t have the best body control, like Ja Morant, where you fly in the air and know exactly where you are and all that stuff. But I do a good job of not being out of stance a lot.”
Williams felt that his capability as a defender had far surpassed his reputation, so he relished every single time a ballhandler would wave him over for a clear-out. He ended up being one of 25 players to defend more than 100 isolations over the entirety of last season and ranked fourth in the fewest points per possession allowed, according to Synergy Sports.
He would see defenders think that because he wasn’t blocking shots or getting steals, that he was an easy bucket. Williams would get hit with a crossover or a forearm shove, stumble, yet still stay in the play. It wasn’t pretty, but it was subtly effective.
“Then you miss three in a row and you’re like, ‘Dang, like, am I just missing, or is there a reason?’” says Williams.
That consistency on defense and improved shooting resulted in a steady increase in his minutes as the season wore on and the Celtics ascended the standings. Udoka whittled down the big-man rotation to trust Williams with a larger role to take on key starters throughout the game.
He had finally gotten to the point within the organization that he could get yelled at by the coach or a teammate — which still happens often — then be thrown right back into the fire.
“To be able to say I guarded Joel Embiid and Trae Young in back-to-back games, that’s kind of cool to look back to,” Williams says. “Even in the beginning of the season, when (I was) in and out of rotation, still trying to gain trust with the coach, once you develop that trust, you haven’t lost it. The proud moment is when you’re at the point where you have a rough game, and the next day you’re still trusted to bounce back.”
The catalog of defensive performances against key players was growing deep, he was shooting on command, and all the chicanery now seemed to add to the body of work, rather than distract from it.
“We love Grant for everything he brings to this team, on and off the court,” Marcus Smart says. “He understands that he’s him and he’s not changing for anybody and that’s what we love about him. He’s going to be himself no matter what.”
It’s April Fools’ Day and the Boston media contingent is gathered for an impromptu press conference, but nobody knows what for this time. Players don’t take the podium before games. They’re too busy getting warmed up, locked in, or scrolling Instagram. But Williams has convened the press corp to a room covered with posters detailing his teammates’ defensive achievements.
Williams sits downs and announces the unofficial Celtics All-Defense campaign, delivering the stump speech for each member of the starting lineup. He pledges to dye his hair green if they all make it (they won’t). He’ll take some credit for at least getting Smart and Rob Williams on there.
This is his day to shine. Williams is always looking to be the loveable goofball, whether it’s to break the monotony, lift spirits or diffuse tension. At shootaround that morning, the chemistry that had brought the team out of the Eastern Conference basement looked like it was about to unravel for a brief moment.
Grant Williams is used to coaches laying into him his whole career, from Barnes to Brad Stevens to Udoka. His teammates love chiding him and he always embraces leaning into the joke.
When he would precede Udoka at the podium during a shootaround, Udoka would jokingly talk trash or respond to Williams warmly, saying, “Hi” with a quiet, “Shut up.” Grant’s pregame routine included half-heartedly defending jumpers from one of his closest friends on the team, Jayson Tatum, like the little one at the family cookout trying to hoop with the big kids.
“I think Grant likes it, man. Grant is like that little brother that everybody wishes they had,” Smart says. “Then you want to get into it with him and you’re like, ‘Dammit, you gotta love him.’ But that’s who Grant is.”
But after Williams garnered a beloved underdog rep in the bubble, a portion of the Boston fanbase soured on him as he struggled to find his footing in his second year. His shooting was inconsistent, he was mistake-prone and fouled as much as he got stops on defense.
Entering the 2021-22 season, Williams was in open competition for the backup four spot with Juancho Hernangomez, who now remains a free agent after Ainge’s Jazz waived him last month. Though it seemed like an easy choice in hindsight, there was support for Hernangomez to be in the rotation instead.
“It’s bound to happen, that’s how life works. People are going to be on you when you’re down and be with you when you’re up. I never took it personally,” Williams says. “If Boston fans were okay with me not performing, I would be disappointed in them. I feel like they hold me to a higher standard and I hold myself to a higher standard in life. So I’m just excited to be in the market that’s going to do the same for me as I do for myself.”
As much as Williams loves to run his mouth with his teammates or embrace public criticism, he does the most talking with the refs. He’s an undersized big whose physicality is his greatest defensive asset, so that made him a foul machine in his first two seasons. Half of the challenge of even getting minutes was being able to stay on the floor without fouling out.
So he made it a point last season to navigate his relationship with the officials and get the whistle he needed to play the way he wanted. Every dead ball, every timeout, he’d be deep in conversation with one official, then work another five minutes later. Every other time he would get called for a foul, he would try to wipe the abject shock off his face to thoroughly explain his rationale.
“There’s been times where I gotta tap him to take him away from the ref,” Rob Williams said. “He’s always talking to the damn ref after everything. Thirty minutes later, he’s still talking to the ref.”
Though much of his defensive improvement is a result of better positioning to make legal contact, he found himself getting more of a benefit of the doubt than he saw in years past.
“It’s just a matter of being honest and respectful,” says Williams. “I feel like referees, anyone in life, if you communicate with them in the right context, they’ll hopefully listen and understand. If you come at them irate or giving them too much drama or showing them up, that’s when you start seeing a little bit of gray area.”
He needed that gray area for this past postseason run, serving as one of the Celtics’ primary defenders against Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jimmy Butler and Adebayo en route to the NBA Finals. At this point of the season, he was no longer the isolation target offenses were hunting. He was the defensive specialist teams wanted to avoid.
“I was the guy they didn’t want in actions and that’s what was super, super humbling for me,” Williams says. “I was like, dang, I remember back in the day where guys would point to me and say, ‘Bring him up.’ Now it’s like, ‘Nah, wave him down, leave him there. Bring the next guy and make them come up.’”
But things went south in the Finals. He no longer was facing a team building around a star trying to bulldoze into the paint, and he felt Steph Curry persistently targeting him. His frustration with the officials was affecting his focus.
Udoka spent the playoff run telling his team to stop complaining and maintain focus, particularly ahead of the elimination Game 6. The players kept emphasizing it as they saw their 2-1 finals lead flip.
“We can’t rely on anybody else, whether it’s the fans, whether it’s the officials, whether it’s the other team,” Williams says ahead of Game 6. “You have to go out there and approach it as if this is the last thing toward my ultimate goal and this is what I really care wholely and solely about.”
Of course, the whistle remained tight, the Garden crowd couldn’t fuel Boston’s tired legs and the Warriors made sure that blank banner hanging in the Celtics’ practice facility remained untouched. For Williams, and the Celtics, there was still another level to hit.
While Williams’ defensive versatility has been his calling card, the Warriors proved he still has to open up his offensive game. He found his offensive role as a floor spacer earlier in the year, finally becoming a knock-down shooter from the corners and being able to make passes when attacking closeouts to keep the offense flowing.
He was one of the league’s best stationary spot-up shooters, hitting 44.7 percent of his 3s over the first 60 games of the season. It was a triumph for a player who missed the first 25 attempts of his career.
“We understood that the way I was gonna improve is based off my shooting, and I was a good shooter, but I didn’t shoot with confidence my second year,” says Williams. “Like, I was shooting (37.2) percent during that season, but I wasn’t shooting a lot of them. I was shot faking or hesitating my shots that were open. I probably should have shot but I didn’t. So it was more so getting the shot off quicker with more confidence and then the rest of the game kind of comes through that.”
Then, suddenly, over the final five weeks of the regular season, nothing was falling. As the playoffs went on, he would alternate hot and cold nights, but his defense was keeping him in there.
After he tied Curry’s and Marcus Morris’ Game 7 record with seven 3s to take down Milwaukee in the second round, he hit five threes in his last 10 playoff games against Miami and Golden State. The same slump he hit in April, which took him out of the running for the NBA 3-point crown, had returned at the worst time. But even when Williams would come away empty, Udoka kept going to him and his teammates kept believing in him.
It all led to a Game 7 against the Bucks where Milwaukee dared him to take anything he wanted, as he continued to miss. He obliged, launching a Game 7 record 18 shots from deep, with enough going down to secure an easy win.
“He’s got to be a confident shooter for his coaches and players to trust him. After missing two, don’t be hesitant on the third,” Ainge says. “I thought that was the epitome of his Game 7 (against Milwaukee). That was the true test, right? You’re at the crucial moment and you’re shooting and you’re not making shots and you’re passing up a couple of shots. That’s exactly all he’s been preparing for.”
While his defense again proved crucial against Miami, he struggled to find another way to contribute on offense versus the Warriors. He was stuck in a bad personnel matchup on defense, and saw his minutes dwindle.
He knew his defensive kryptonite was quick guards who could pull up to shoot from anywhere. He understood the Warriors could take away his corner 3s and cut off his passing angles. They had every answer.
“The thing I learned about the Finals is the discipline side of things,” Williams says. “Everybody that makes it to the Finals is there for a reason and you have to be able to impact both sides of the ball and I felt that discipline the Warriors showed was the reason why they beat us. Less so about talent or anything else, because I felt like as a team, we are the most talented team in the league. So we just have to be a little better disciplined and understand exactly what we need to reach for this upcoming season.”
So on a team that fell two wins short of the ultimate goal and has reloaded with the additions of Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari, how will Williams continue to grow with this organization? He is entering the final year of his rookie deal and is eligible for a contract extension, so that question will determine whether he locks in his future now.
The team has initiated talks, even as Stevens’ front office continues to fill open roster spots and the rest of the trade and free-agent market takes shape. Though recent deals for Brogdon and Derrick White have loaded up Boston’s cap sheet the next three seasons, Al Horford’s sizeable contract comes off the books next summer.
Williams will be seeking a deal akin to a core rotation player who could earn a starting spot on a contender in the near future. Finding a number that works for both parties will be tough to define considering Rob Williams’ recent extension pays him an annual average value of $13 million, even after making an all-defensive team. Meanwhile, in this year’s market, a veteran 3-and-D role player in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope inked a $15 million annual average value extension with Denver, while P.J. Tucker, a frequent comp for Grant Williams, received $11 million annually.
But, of course, Williams is 14 years younger than Tucker and is still early in his development curve. The NBPA expects the salary cap to jump another 10 percent next season, so prospective market inflation factors into future extensions being negotiated this summer.
Boston has managed to extend the recent first-round picks it hasn’t traded early, with Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Rob Williams all working out deals. Rob Williams signed below market value, knowing he was going to ascend into the starting lineup permanently, and health has been a major concern. Brown took a below-max deal, then made his first All-Star team and is certainly underpaid.
“Just making sure that the extension works for both sides. My number one focus is winning,” says Williams. “You take care of the good guys. You take care of the guys that provide value to your team, both on and off the floor. I feel like the Celtics are feeling the same way. I’m not too stressed about the negotiations because I feel like both parties want to get a deal done.”
Williams says he wants to finish his career in Boston and is grateful for everything Ainge and Stevens have done for him. He has to stay. He still owes his former boss.
“Grant, he loves to talk big and I got a kick out of his personality. But a lot of young guys, that’s what they think they’re gonna do, they’re gonna win that championship, and they have those kinds of goals in their minds,” Ainge says. “Some of them work hard to do everything they can to accomplish those goals and I think Grant is one of those guys that has put in the work.”
He may be a role player, but he wants to be a star in his role. Ainge is not with the Celtics anymore, but Williams’ promise to bring him another banner was not just to the man who drafted him. It’s also to the organization and the city that, after a bumpy road, have come to embrace him.
“When you see me walk to the 3-point line and size up the crowd, I’m standing there looking up at those banners, because that’s the number one goal,” Williams says. “That’s the number one driver for me and something that I want to add to, ’cause I feel like we’re missing a couple up there.”
