![]() ![]() The now Utah Jazz CEO doesn’t recall exactly what his response was, but there certainly were some chuckles. From the beginning, that was my way of cementing history with this franchise and my way of doing it with the team.”Īinge laughs remembering the moment a 20-year-old role player, on his first day in the building, declaring he was going to deliver him a title. “That’s something I feel like that we both understood with one another, that’s the number one goal. “I knew from my life that’s the one goal that I had and it’s not even the MVPs or anything else, it was that Banner 18 for the Celtics franchise,” Williams says with conviction. Williams, who had just been selected 22nd in the 2019 NBA Draft out of Tennessee, grinned with a naive yet assured optimism and simply told him, “I’m gonna get you that banner.” He had seen everything it took to get there. He had been a part of raising those banners as a player and an executive. Puzzled why there was this empty stretch of canvas hiding in plain sight among a sea of 17 championship banners, he thought for a second and the first word to come out of his mouth as a Celtic was, “Why?”Īinge, Boston’s president of basketball operations at the time, explained the symbolism, the history and the goal. Sitting in Ainge’s office just after being drafted by the Celtics, Williams peered out the window and spotted a blank banner hanging in the corner of the Auerbach Center. Grant Williams wanted to make a strong first impression on Danny Ainge.
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