Boston’s Grant Williams discusses Celtics’ love for intense, six-deck ‘Uno’ games

The history of the NBA has its own lore regarding how players have found outlets to sublimate their competitive natures with teammates off the court in all sorts of pastimes from other sports like golf to gambling on high-stakes poker, with feats of strength even working their way into the legends of contending teams past.

But the current iteration of the Boston Celtics evidently has taken this tradition to an unusually wholesome but likely just as cutthroat of a game, one based on the classic “Crazy Eights” card game with its own unique rules. Familiar to most of us, the 2021-22 Celtics have developed something of a penchant for no-stakes “Uno,” which resident team tabletop gamer Grant Williams talked to the press at length about on Sunday.

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“This is literally the first time an NBA team could say they are doing something for no money involved, right?” asked Williams with a smirk, a nod at those many competitive traditions shared by teams over the decades.

“We’re playing ‘Uno,’ and let’s just say Matt Ryan is the worst player outside of Malik Fitts,” continued the Tennessee product.

“Myself and Al (Horford) are competitive, but we sit next to one another, so it’s either one of beats one that day or the other does, say with (Daniel) Theis, or (Marcus) Smart. So there’s a couple guys we like to play with, like seven dudes. It’s like me, Theis, Smart, Al, Brodric (Thomas), Malik, even (Derrick) White sometimes, Matt. It goes down the line; (Jaylen Brown) — we’ve had a huge group before. We have these six decks of ‘Uno.’”

“It’s pretty dope,” he added.