Grant Williams on his suspension: 'I gotta be better'
BOSTON -- Celtics forward Grant Williams maintains that the contact he made with official Cheryl Flores during Monday night's loss was inadvertent. But he understands -- and accepts -- the one-game suspension that the NBA handed down to him on Wednesday.
Williams will now have to sit out Boston's home game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday night, leaving the Celtics extremely thin in the front court.
"Disappointed for sure," Williams said after Thursday's practice. "More so disappointed about missing the game. You never want to let you team down and I did."
Williams said that he did not mean to make contact with Flores, and bumping into her was "nowhere near intentional." But he accepts the suspension.
"The punishment, it's just. I made a mistake," he said. "So for me, it's something I probably won't challenge. Especially the fact that one, it's a female referee and two, it's not something that we want our players to be doing in the league.
"So no matter if it was inadvertent or not, I gotta be better," Williams continued. "I gotta be more mindful and more conscience of my surroundings and my mental state, and not let anything affect me during the game."
Williams' fourth-quarter ejection followed a string of frustrating calls during Boston's 120-102 loss to the Bulls in Chicago. Interim head coach Joe Mazzulla had been ejected late in the third quarter, and it was a questionable blocking call that set off the events leading to Williams' ejection.
"It was probably a succession of calls that I disagreed with," Williams said on Thursday. "After the moving screen call, I was questioning it, so there was a bit of emotion in the moment. That next play was directly after when I took a charge. I felt it was a bang-bang play, more of a charge in my eyes, but it was called a block.
"I got up and tried to run off in disagreement. I looked up and saw, 'oh crap, I'm about to make contact.' I tried to avoid it, but my glute hit her hip," he said.
Williams barked at officials as he made his way down the tunnel in Chicago, which did not help his cause with the NBA. The league said Wednesday that Williams was suspended for "recklessly making contact with and directing inappropriate language toward a game official."
Now in his fourth year with the Celtics, Williams averaged 9.5 points and 4.3 rebounds over the first four games of the season.
