If you watched the Celtics over these past few seasons, the amount of endless talking to the referees, opponents and coaches was frankly exhausting. After shipping Marcus Smart-who was the worst offender of that nonsense-to Memphis a few weeks back, Boston followed that up by having mouthy forward Grant Williams go to the Mavericks in a three-team sign-and-trade deal which will give the restricted free agent what he wanted: a four-year deal worth $53 million. San Antonio receives forward Reggie Bullock from Dallas as well as an unprotected first-round pick swap in 2030 with the Mavericks. Dallas and the Celts will both receive two second-round picks and Boston also gets a $6.2 million trade exception.
This deal took awhile to come together since from all that we heard-Boston wanting a first-round pick for Williams-never seemed to materialize. The former first-round pick (22nd overall) of the Celtics in 2019 is a solid role player who will likely never be more than that in the NBA. His scoring and rebounding averages went up all four years in Boston though, culminating with 8.1 points per game and 4.6 rebounds per game in 2022-23. He is also a good three-point shooter (37.9% for his career with a high of 41.1% in the 2021-22 season). Head coach Joe Mazzulla began this past postseason by burying Grant which was a mistake since he had been a valuable part of head coach Ime Udoka's rotation the previous season when they reached the NBA Finals with Williams averaging 8.6 points per game in the playoffs.
I appreciated Williams' toughness, he was very dependable-appearing in 77 regular season games then 79 regular season games in the past two seasons-and he was not afraid to take on much bigger guys. He will always be remembered for talking trash to Heat star Jimmy Butler in the Eastern Conference Finals a few months ago which did not end so well but at least he showed a pulse which could not be said for most of his teammates. With that said, like Smart this seemed to be another Celtic who was completely delusional as to how important he truly was to the team. Couple that with the non-stop talking (and you can only imagine what he was like in the locker room, on the planes, buses, etc) and you can see how the Celts were probably ready to move on from him.
This also shows (as if there was any remaining doubt), that Boston is putting all the onus on its two stars-Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown-to take over the main leadership roles on this team moving forward. Subtracting Smart and Williams from the equation means that there will be two less loud voices and big personalities to have to constantly deal with. Additionally, this frees up some money that can hopefully go towards that infamous supermax extension that Brown is eligible for but has not gotten yet from the C's. We wish Grant well in Dallas, Luka Doncic should be awesome to play with but good luck dealing with Kyrie Irving.
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