Grant Williams expects NBPA leadership to meet on Kyrie Irving controversy

BOSTON — Grant Williams is one of three Celtics players that are currently among the seven vice presidents in the NBA players’ association, along with suspended Nets guard Kyrie Irving.

On the heels of Irving being suspended for promoting an anti-semitic documentary on social media and refusing to directly apologize until Thursday night for those posts, Irving’s future with the Nets and the NBA is an open question.

The NBPA released a statement on Tuesday denouncing Anti-Semitism but Irving’s comments were not mentioned in the statement. MassLive spoke with Grant Williams ahead of Friday’s game with the Bulls about whether union leadership will be addressing the issue with Irving.

“I think we will but currently, there are a lot of matters as well,” Williams told MassLive. “I think we’ll get together as a group potentially — everything has been through the team. It has been not been a league issue to this point. It hasn’t been an NBA/NBPA issue. The Nets and the league have taken care of that and dealing with Kyrie and the process there. We don’t have much control on that matter.”

Irving was suspended for a minimum of five games on Thursday night by Brooklyn after promoting an antisemitic film on social media and for failing to apologize on Thursday in multiple meetings with the media. Irving eventually apologized on Instagram late Thursday night hours after the suspension came down but Nets general manager Sean Marks said there would need to be additional steps taken for Irving to return to the team.

“I think after anything like this, you would always hope that there’s a change,” Marks told reporters Friday. “There’s a change in feelings, a change in attitude, I think, per his apology, that’s a step in the right direction. But as we’ve sort of stated, actions speak louder than words. And so he’s had some time and there will be more time to reflect on that.

“He’s going to have to sit down [with Jewish leaders]. He’s going to have to sit down with the organization after this. And we’ll evaluate and see if this is the right opportunity to bring him back.”

Williams told MassLive that he has not directly spoken with Irving about the situation yet but strongly denounced any kind of hate speech.

“I haven’t had much communication with him on the manner,” Williams said. “For me, I’m trying my best to educate myself on the situation, understand what has been said and has been done. You don’t promote any type of hate speech or anything like that. You do your best to stay informed on the matter and gain all the information before making decision to support each side. You try your best to educate yourself and outside of that, I don’t have much to say because I don’t know much about the matter because I’ve tried to keep my eyes on the right thing and moving forward.”

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