Draymond Green is in full offseason mode after the Golden State Warriors got bounced in Round 2, giving him plenty of time to trash the down-on-their-luck Boston Celtics ahead of Tuesday night’s do-or-die Game 4 against the Miami Heat.
Green, as he’s prone to doing at any given chance, ripped the Celtics for getting humiliated by the Heat on three consecutive occasions. But more specifically, Green addressed Boston’s failure to back Grant Williams after he “poked the bear” that is Jimmy Butler in Game 2, which exposed Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown as a tandem of frauds failling to rise to the ocassion.
“They were losing the lead, energy was gone. Like, he hit a trey and started talking crazy. As much as we all want to blame Grant Williams, that ain’t Grant Williams’ fault,” Green said, per Bleacher Report video. “Like, Grant Williams supposed to do that. Like, when you do that, yeah you do got to stand on that. And of course, you’re going to hear it, like, ain’t no passes, but you then need JT and JB to like, come on now, turn it into gear and cover your man.
“After the game, they asking JB about Grant and poking the bear or whatnot, and he said, ‘Next question.’ To me, I’m like, ‘Oh, they done.’ You can’t ‘Next question’ it, JB. The Celtics quit.”
Green’s takeaway, while on-brand and harsh, is spot on.
There’s no other way to view how the series has unfolded. Early on, it looked competitive. Butler was in full playoff mode, which was expected. Brown and Tatum, while certainly not in contention for series MVP out the gate, kept the game sustainable until the snowball effect kicked in, dragging the Celtics to a 3-0 deficit.
Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra has pulled the carpet right from beneath Boston’s Joe Mazzulla, putting the Celtics’ depth to shame while leaning on Gabe Vincent, Caleb Martin and Duncan Robinson to run circles around the C’s defense on a night-to-night basis. And regardless of how many 2004 Boston Red Sox refences are spewed pregame, or how many times Mazzulla binge-watches ‘The Town,’ it’s unlikely that changes and the Celtics claw back in this series.
It’s either live to play another day or fly back to Boston with the season buried in Miami.
