Nate Williams remained very confident after his career game against the Clippers.
The Golden State Warriors did not achieve the desired outcome on Monday night in their home game against the Los Angeles Clippers. With a chance to reestablish some separation between the two teams for the 8th seed in the Western Conference, a horrid second half saw the Warriors blow a 14-point halftime lead and lose the game, 114-101.
The loss dropped the Warriors' lead over the Clippers to just 1.5 games, creating some potentially troubling scenarios in the regular season's remaining month and a half.
However, despite the loss, one good thing did come out of the game: the performance of two-way guard Nate Williams. Williams came off the bench in the first quarter and poured in a career-high 18 points in 22 minutes, all in just his second game of the season.
Williams Gives Confident Answer
In addition to his career night on the offensive end, Williams was also tasked with guarding Kawhi Leonard for many of his minutes. Leonard has been on a tear this season, posting some career-best numbers, and it's no easy task for a seasoned veteran to guard him, let alone a two-way player with less than 50 career NBA games.
Nonetheless, Williams did a solid job, and when asked about that experience, he gave an extremely confident answer.
"He's a great player. But he bleeds just like I bleed. I don't fear no challenge."
Williams elaborated on how he maintains this mentality later in his postgame press conference.
"I fear God. That's the only man I fear. I'm from Rochester, New York, in the backstreets. If you go in my neighborhood, you would know why I'm this way."
It's a great sign to see a player like Williams maintaining his sky-high confidence and self-belief, even though he's being thrust into a large role right off the bat.
Williams Likely To Continue Getting Minutes
Williams' opportunities have arisen largely due to the amount of injuries the Warriors have been suffering, but that opportunity doesn't seem likely to go away any time soon.
Steph Curry is the main injury that's warping the Warriors' rotation, as his knee injury continues to keep him out for at least one more week as he hopes for the pain and swelling to subside. In addition to Curry, some wings are now dropping due to injury, as well.
Will Richard suffered an ankle sprain in the Warriors' game against the Lakers on Saturday, and he'll be missing his second-straight game on Thursday against the Rockets. Moses Moody suffered a sprained wrist in the Clippers game, and he's also been announced to be missing the Houston game.
That's two high-impact players that open up space for Williams to fill their exact roles as 3-and-D wing players that play connecting basketball.
Ultimately, the Warriors' shortage of healthy bodies isn't great for their odds of winning, but the silver lining has been that it's exposed what some of these two-way or end-of-the-bench players are capable of, such as Williams or Gui Santos.