Watch: Ex-Celtic Grant Williams ejected for flagrant foul after charging at Jayson Tatum
Williams was the first player tossed, but more Hornets joined him as frustrations boiled over in the closing minutes.
Grant Williams heaped praise on the Celtics early Friday afternoon, but that same attitude wasn’t reflected in his dirty play at the end of the Celtics-Hornets game Friday night.
With under five minutes to play and a fairly convincing double-digit lead for Boston, Williams seemed to let his frustrations boil over on the court — at the expense of former teammate and Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum.
During a transition play, Williams charged toward Tatum, carrying the ball down the court, and threw a shoulder directly into the forward, sending both players tumbling to the floor. Tatum immediately shot up and walked away from the play, fending off an official in the process.
Referees initiated a review of the altercation, and assessed Williams a flagrant foul two for a dangerous non-basketball move. That prompted an ejection for the once-beloved Celtics depth piece.
Watch the play unfold here:
The chippy end-of-game actions by Charlotte didn’t stop there, though.
Moments after Williams’s ejection, LaMelo Ball was assessed a flagrant foul one, also committing a foul on Tatum. Ball contested a Tatum three-pointer into the star’s landing space. Though his flagrant foul didn’t constitute an automatic ejection like Williams’s, Ball fouled out on the play anyway.
In the final minute of play, Miles Bridges was also ejected, and once again the play involved Tatum, though he was spared a hard foul the third time around. Instead, Tatum fired up a three-pointer just after the whistle, and Bridges volleyball jumped up for it, spiking the basketball into the stands hard.
Bridges seemed either surprised by the decision or confused about who the foul was assessed to, because he didn’t immediately leave the court after the play.
After Bridges did hop off the court, Boston was finally able to run the clock out for a 124-109 win on the road. But not without plenty of drama in the closing moments.
“That stuff at the end was BS,” Celtics guard Derrick White said in a postgame interview.
Tatum may have gotten the last laugh through all of the antics, finishing with a game-high 32 points and 11 rebounds.
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