Ex-Celtics standout Grant Williams shared why he was ‘excited’ to see former team win title last season
"Honestly, I didn't really feel down because I left Boston."
Grant Williams wasn’t bitter watching his former team win the NBA championship last season.
The ex-Celtics forward, who’s now with the Hornets, explained that it would be difficult for him to be upset watching his former teammates win it as it was his decision to leave the team and sign with the Mavericks in 2023.
“It was special, man,” Williams told reporters ahead of Friday’s Celtics-Hornets matchup, via Noa Dalzell. “Honestly, I didn’t really feel down because I left Boston. I wasn’t one of those, where, if I had gotten traded out of there, like there was some bad blood, it’d been different.
“But I was excited for those guys because we didn’t get it done for those two years before. I was fortunate to be able to witness what those guys had done.”
Williams was actually at TD Garden the night the Celtics won Game 5 of the NBA Finals, joining Hornets teammates Brandon Miller and Mark Williams. They were there to support Charles Lee, who was finishing up his stint as the Celtics’ associate coach before becoming the Hornets’ head coach.
However, Williams stopped by the Celtics’ locker room celebration. As he saw his former teammates celebrating, there was one particular teammate Williams was most happy for.
“The smile on [Jaylen Brown’s] face, [Jayson Tatum’s] face, [Al Horford’s] face — that’s the one person I wanted it the most for,” Williams said. “I love Derrick [White] and those guys, but Al, that’s my vet. Him and Blake Griffin were huge for me in that last year in Boston, just keeping my mind and mental space in a good spot. I’ll always be thankful for him and his family.”
Williams also said he enjoyed the Finals battle between the two teams he used to play for, even though the Mavericks traded him in the middle of the 2023-24 season and made a surge in the standing after that move.
“That was just a special, unique opportunity to be there,” Williams said. “It was pretty cool to witness just both teams competing and both guys, whether it was Luka [Doncic] and that group or JT and this group, compete at a high level. There’s nothing more you can ask for as a fan of basketball and as a friend to both teams. That was great.”
Last season’s championship win certainly felt like a long time coming for the Celtics, particularly Tatum and Brown. The star wings had led Boston to the Eastern Conference finals in four of the previous six seasons, reaching that round in three of the four seasons Williams was with the team.
The closest the Celtics came to a title over that stretch was in 2022, when they lost to the Warriors in the NBA Finals. Williams admitted that the Celtics were better equipped to win it all in 2024 than they were in 2022.
“I think their offense was significantly better than ours that year we went to the Finals,” Williams said. “I think that’s what stagnated us in that Finals run. We did a great job of guarding and defending under that Ime [Udoka] crew, but I think we still didn’t understood what it took to win in the Finals yet. We saw with that team, they just played a little more freely, with a little more pass than isolation than we did in that Finals series against the Warriors.
“JT and JB didn’t feel like they had to do it by themselves. They had a good group around them with Jrue [Holiday], D White, and all those guys.”
To Williams’s point, the Celtics’ offense was better in 2024 than they were in 2022. After finishing first in offensive rating during the 2023-24 regular season, Boston posted a 111 offensive rating during its Finals win over Dallas. It had posted just a 105.8 offensive rating in its Finals loss to Golden State.
Williams also credited the Celtics’ coaching staff, saying Joe Mazzulla “did a phenomenal job game-planning for that series” alongside Lee.
“They had a special opportunity to capitalize on it,” Williams said. “They played against a team in Dallas that had a bunch of talented players, but the continuity Boston had, especially being there, gave them that edge.”
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