Jayson Tatum, Celtics roll as Grant Williams and Hornets lose control late: Takeaways
With two minutes left in the fourth quarter and the Celtics up nine, Williams delivered a huge blow in transition to Tatum.
Jayson Tatum and the Celtics pulled away for a comfortable 124-109 win on Saturday as Grant Williams and the Hornets lost their cool entirely in the closing minutes.
Here are the takeaways.
Grant Williams got ejected for a dirty hit on Jayson Tatum.
We would be remiss if we didn’t start with the most dramatic moments of an otherwise relatively sleepy game.
With two minutes left in the fourth quarter and the Celtics up nine, Grant Williams delivered a huge blow in transition to Tatum, going shoulder to shoulder and knocking the Celtics star to the ground hard.
Tatum bounced up immediately (shoving off the hands of a referee checking on him en route to the free-throw line), but the officials waved everyone back to their benches to examine the play. After review, Williams was ejected with a flagrant two.
“I just liked how JT handled it,” Mazzulla said tersely when a reporter asked him what he thought of the play. “It was great. Get hit like that, pop right back up, it’s big time.”
The call was well-earned. Williams hit Tatum hard out of nowhere, and as official James Williams told the crowd, there was plenty of potential for injury. Williams’ play was dirty, reckless and wildly unnecessary.
Much has been made of the good will between Williams and the Celtics. Plays like that can’t help but make you wonder whether that good will has been overstated, and whether any remaining good will might have been lit on fire by Williams for absolutely no discernible reason.
“He hit him like it was a football play, like Ray Lewis coming across the middle or something,” Jaylen Brown said afterward, adding that “there’s no place in the game for that.
“I thought JT and Grant were friends. I guess not.”
The Hornets went to pieces after the ejection.
Charlotte completely lost control of the rope after Williams was ejected. Tatum made both free throws off the flagrant two, and on the ensuing possession, LaMelo Ball committed his sixth foul of the game stepping under Tatum’s foot on a 3-pointer (Ball collected a couple of his previous fouls on the aforementioned drives by Brown). Ball’s foul was upgraded to a flagrant one after officials examined it and saw (once again) potential for injury. Then Payton Pritchard was fouled and went 1-for-2 at the line, and when the Hornets tried to inbound the ball, Pritchard stole it, which ended in a two-handed slam by Queta. The eight-point trip down the floor completely put the game on ice for the Celtics, and the Hornets responded by … watching Miles Bridges petulantly punch the ball out of bounds and get himself ejected from the game as well.
The Hornets might have some young talent, but they didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory as the game wound down.
Hear Grant Williams’ take on the situation.
Williams, who has always been verbose, downplayed the situation at length.
“JT is one of my closest friends in the league,” Williams said. “There was no intention to harm him in any way. It was just one of those plays where full speed, he passes the ball, which probably makes it worse. …
“I don’t think it leads to anything if it’s not escalated after the fact. You see me raise my hand and say, ‘I fouled him,’ trying to take the foul in transition, got helped up by teammates and walked away. I don’t think anybody thought it was a malicious attempt by any means, because you don’t see anybody running up to me. Neemias [Queta], [Derrick] White, any of those guys.”
Williams was asked what Brown said.
“‘That’s what we doing, Grant?’ or something like that,” Williams said. “But it’s just like, no, he knows me too well and stuff like that. It’s just a hard foul. We play them again tomorrow. It’s nothing crazy or beyond the means. We all know JT is my guy. So nothing intentional.”
Tatum continues to rack up points in a variety of ways.
Tatum’s relatively cool streak from behind the arc continued with a 3-for-9 performance, but he went to the free-throw line 15 times for the second game in a row and scored 34 points.
Tatum admitted that he settled for roughly eight 3-pointers against the Pacers, and he may have settled for a few on Friday as well, firing up and missing some tempting looks behind the arc when he could have attacked a Hornets defense that has more holes than an ant hill.
Still, Tatum’s production (which included 11 rebounds, three assists and three steals on Friday) is pretty undeniable in the early going.
Jaylen Brown attacked the paint (but couldn’t make 3s).
Brown said earlier this season that he would make his money attacking the paint, and there may not have been a more pronounced example than on Friday – Brown went 8-for-19 from the field and 0-for-6 from behind the arc, dropping 25 points to go with six rebounds and five assists.
Brown’s forays inside the arc were overwhelmingly successful. The Hornets don’t have a lot of size or muscle on the perimeter, and Brown was able to get his shoulder into smaller Hornets guards (especially LaMelo Ball), and he posted up Josh Green successfully multiple times. When the Hornets collapsed to contain him, Brown did his best Tatum impression and made several nice passes to create baskets for teammates. His aggressive play earned him 10 trips to the free throw line, nine of which were successful.
The downside: Brown’s 3-point shot seems to have temporarily deserted him after Wednesday’s 1-for-11 debacle.
Brown told reporters after Wednesday’s game that he felt his team’s lackluster energy and performance were largely on him, and that he needed to be better for his guys. Brown was better on Wednesday, and any time the Celtics collapse the opposing defense, good things generally happen.
It might be nice for Brown to see a couple of 3-pointers go down, however.
Neemias Queta had mixed results.
Queta is a fantastic fourth option off the bench and a really nice burst of energy when he gets minutes. Queta finished with three offensive rebounds and 10 points on 5-for-5 shooting, and he impacted the game defensively with his verticality.
He also threw down this huge dunk on Bridges, with a little extra disrespect at the end that may have helped put Bridges in the bad mood that seemingly got him ejected.
Queta’s defensive rebounding left a lot to be desired, however. At one point with Queta on the floor and Luke Kornet out of the game, the Hornets snared four offensive rebounds on one possession, which ended with a layup by Tre Mann. Queta is big and physically gifted, and he needs to be able to put an end to defensive possessions that the Celtics win.
Still, for his role, Queta is an excellent option who can very capably fill minutes on nights like Wednesday when Al Horford needs a night off. Expect the Celtics to have Horford back for the second night of their back-to-back on Saturday.
The Celtics don’t respect Josh Green as a shooter.
At one point in the first half, Hornets guard Josh Green caught a pass in transition and lined up a 3-point shot from the corner. Derrick White started to close out to him, but then immediately abandoned the closeout to try to get in rebounding position. Sure enough, Green missed the jumper.
The play wasn’t particularly impactful, but it was a callback to the Celtics’ championship series against Green and the Mavericks. How so many people got that series prediction wrong remains a bit of a mystery.
Maybe Grant Williams was actually mad at Derrick White?
White took care of business on both ends against Williams with this block, followed by a nice hesitation move leading to a foul.
Jordan Walsh provided a little boost.
Walsh entered the game in the first half and buried a couple of 3-pointers in his six-minute stint. The first was just seconds after he checked in – Brown drove, drew defenders and kicked out to Walsh for the 3-pointer that seemed to put the second-year wing in rhythm, because he buried his next shot too.
“If they are on the floor, I believe in them,” Mazzulla said. “So it’s been a strength – really since I’ve been here, it’s been a strength of our roster. We have guys we believe in that work really hard, our player development teams work with them, whoever’s available we have a chance to win, whoever it is. […] Jordan goes in, knocks down a shot, looks good, Neemi and Luke, so to me, whoever is out there, we have a chance to win, and that’s how it has to be.”
Round 2: Fight!
The Celtics will face the Hornets again on Saturday in what suddenly looks like a much more interesting rematch after Friday’s fireworks. They close their four-game road trip on Monday against the Hawks.
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