Draymond Green went off in calling out Grant Williams for his role in the endgame melee that marred the Golden State Warriors‘ 97-84 rout of the Charlotte Hornets on Friday, February 23, at Chase Center.
“I don’t really understand why people get so mad at like somebody scoring at the end of the game,” Green told reporters after the win. “It’s like this dumb unofficial unwritten rule that everybody gets mad. Like if y’all were winning by 13 points, would you get mad if he laid the ball up? I doubt it. And so it’s kind of like a sore loser type thing.”
The Endgame Melee
Williams and Warriors’ wing Lester Quiñones were ejected with 10.9 seconds left in the game after they got into each other’s face. The Hornets took offense to Quiñones scoring a layup with the Warriors’ win already wrapped up.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr explained during his postgame interview that he always tells his team to keep playing when there’s a shot clock differential, which they have been doing in the past and nobody gets offended until Friday night.
Hornets’ power forward Miles Bridges also received a technical foul.
“Miles [Bridges] is my guy, that’s my little brother, so I’m not going to sit here and go in on Miles,” Green said. “Miles can do no wrong to me. But Grant Williams got to stop it, man. He can’t keep being like this tough guy. It’s going absolutely wrong for him.
Like he’s a really nice guy and, and for some reason, he keeps like trying to jump on the unlikable side and I must tell you it’s not always fun over here. It’s not always a good time. I don’t know, man, he needs to figure it out. Talking too much kind of got you out of Dallas, like overdoing it and he over there talking too much now. So you might want to slow down and stop all the tough guy stuff.”
Grant was recently traded to the Hornets from the Mavericks because he “rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” per ESPN’s Tim MacMahon.
‘Ain’t No Friends’
Green had more words to unload on Williams.
“You want to be the president of the [Players Association] and stuff, man,” Green said. “You can’t be out here doing all that stuff. You don’t see CJ McCollum running around being a tough guy. Chris [Paul] was tough as hell as the Players Association president, but like CP is six feet, like you got to have some nastiness to you to be that great and be six feet tall.”
Williams was elected last year as the first vice president of the NBPA.
“I don’t know what Grant Williams out here doing, man,” Green continued. “He getting into it with everybody this year and then he came over to our bench and thought he was about to have a friend. Ain’t no friends for you over here, my man, like you got to go down there and talk to your guys. You can’t come over here and talk to us about what just happened with our players. Like no, we support [Quinoñes].
‘Pray for Grant Williams’
Green, like Kerr, explained why Quinoñes had to shoot the ball.
“Also, there’s a two-second differential in the shot clock. Would you like us to take another turnover? We got enough turnovers on this game as it is with 22 turnovers. You want us to get 23? You also cannot press down 13 with a minute to go and then somebody shoots a layup with 22 seconds to go and you get mad. With 2:45, we took our stars out, go sit down, it’s over. Game is over, go sit down. They didn’t want to go sit down. So if y’all still playing, they play, don’t stop now because there’s 22 seconds left and you finally feel like it’s out of reach. Clearly, we thought it was out of reach at 2:45 which is why Steve [Kerr] took everybody out.
“So now that you think it’s out of reach is OK like, ‘Oh it ends now.’ No, it doesn’t work like that. And so I’m really sick of guys with this like, ‘Oh you scored at the end.’ Like bro, you should have done that a long time ago.
“And yeah, man. Pray for Grant Williams.”
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