Austin Rivers, who has played 11 seasons in the NBA, came to the defense of Golden State Warriors big man Draymond Green, who got into an altercation with Charlotte Hornets player Grant Williams on Friday.
Draymond: "I don’t understand why people get so mad at somebody scoring at end of the game. It’s like this dumb, unwritten rule."
"(Grant Williams) being a tough guy is going absolutely wrong for him…Talking too much kind of got you out of Dallas"pic.twitter.com/ctsSIX1haw
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) February 24, 2024
Say what you want about Dray…but he not lying… https://t.co/O5Fg033fhw
— Austin Rivers (@AustinRivers25) February 24, 2024
Tempers began to flare between the Hornets and Warriors when Miles Bridges took exception to Lester Quinones trying to score a basket with Golden State up by double digits with mere seconds left in the game. Williams then got up in Quinones’ face and directed some words his way.
After Williams and Quinones were separated, Green was seen jawing at the Hornets forward.
Green and the Warriors ended up defeating Williams and the Hornets by 13 points at home. Charlotte managed to score just 84 points as a team, and not a single player for the Hornets managed to score 20 points in the game, as Bridges led the way for the squad with 19 on 8-of-18 shooting from the field and 3-of-7 from 3-point range.
To add insult to injury for Williams, he was arguably outplayed by Green. The former ended up with 10 points, three rebounds and one assist on 4-of-9 shooting from the floor and 1-of-5 from deep, while the latter accumulated five points, 13 rebounds, three assists, two blocks and one steal.
Friday wasn’t the first time that Green and Williams got into a confrontation. Green got a technical foul after knocking Williams to the court in Game 2 of the 2022 NBA Finals, when the latter was a member of the Boston Celtics. The Warriors came out on top over the Celtics in six games in the championship series.
Williams hasn’t been playing with the Hornets franchise for very long. Earlier this month, the Dallas Mavericks traded him — plus Seth Curry and a future first-round pick — to Charlotte and received P.J. Washington along with a pair of second-round picks in return.
Across five appearances with the Hornets, Williams is averaging 17.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game while shooting 48.3 percent from the field and 39.4 percent from 3-point range.
