Draymond rips Grant Williams after Warriors’ scuffle with Hornets

Draymond rips Grant Williams after Warriors’ scuffle with Hornets originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Draymond Green has made it very clear on numerous occasions that he doesn’t hold Charlotte Hornets forward Grant Williams in high regard.

The latest evidence to support that statement came after the Warriors’ 97-84 win over the Hornets on Friday at Chase Center.

A late-game scuffle between the two teams overshadowed the ending of a ugly game. The incident began when Warriors guard Lester Quinones attempted a layup with just over 12 seconds remaining in regulation. Hornets wing Miles Bridges took offense to the shot attempt, which he goaltended, by shoving Quinones.

The players on the court converged under the Warriors’ basket and tussled for several minutes. Williams found himself in the middle of the melee, which moved close to Golden State’s bench, where Green was, having been removed from the game several minutes earlier.

Green was asked about the kerfuffle during his postgame press conference and proceeded to rip into Williams, spending more than three minutes carving him up.

“Yeah, I don’t really understand why people get so mad at like somebody scoring at the end of the game,” Green told reporters. “It’s like this dumb unofficial unwritten rule that everybody get 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.

“Miles [Bridges] is my guy, that’s my little brother, so I’m not going to sit here and go in on Miles. 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 need 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.

“You want to be the president of the [Players Association] and stuff, man. 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.

“I don’t know what Grant Williams out here doing, man. 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 [Quinones].

“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 shoot 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 did that a long time ago.

“And yeah, man. Pray for Grant Williams.”

Green and the Warriors have a long history with Williams that dates back to the 2022 NBA Finals.

Williams and Green had several run-ins during that Warriors-Celtics series, and after Golden State won the Finals, Williams claimed Boston was the better team.

Then during the 2022 ESPY Awards show, host Steph Curry took a jab at Williams, joking that he might let him borrow his suit and let him try on his championship ring.

It’s clear the Warriors don’t think much of Williams, and his latest encounter with them isn’t helping his cause.

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