Tennessee basketball: Grant Williams is another Vol who owns Kevin Durant

It’s funny that Rick Barnes is head coach of Tennessee basketball right now because the best player ever at his former school, the Texas Longhorns, is making a habit of being owned by Vols. Kevin Durant suffered at the hands of a former UT player in the NBA Playoffs as the Boston Celtics swept the Brooklyn Nets.

With KD spending most of his time at power forward, Grant Williams came off the bench and gave him tons of trouble. In the final game, he scored 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting and came away with three blocks. For the series, he averaged just over 11 points with a .762 true shooting percentage.

Those numbers are insane, but it’s not the first time Tennessee basketball saw a player’s offensive production humiliate Durant. Way back in 2006, when Barnes and KD were at Texas, Chris Lofton went off for 35 points. He dropped off KD from way outside late in the game with this shot.

That is still arguably the most memorable shot in UT history. Durant has a foot on Lofton when it comes to height and had fully extended, but he couldn’t block the shot. Although Lofton was known for amazing shots while on Rocky Top, that one was on another level.

In that game, the Vols and Bruce Pearl won 111-105 in overtime against Texas despite trailing by 17 points in the second half. Williams followed the tradition Lofton started by owning Durant, but he did so while Boston absolutely dominated the series.

One huge difference between the two is that Durant and Williams went head to head a lot more since they played the same position. He and Al Horford together, who ironically was a rival of the Vols while playing for the Florida Gators in 2006-2007, dealt with Durant in this series.

Now, to be fair to Durant, he wasn’t always handling either of them. Some of the few minutes Durant would rest in the series would be when Williams was in the game, and other times he may have been handled by Andre Drummond. Blake Griffin and Williams went head to head too, but Griffin missed to games.

A similarity, though, is that in both cases, Durant was highly inefficient offensively. He scored 26 points against Tennessee basketball in 2006, but he was 0-of-5 from three. Against Boston, with Williams specifically on him, he was awful, averaging over five turnovers and shooting under 40 percent from the field.

The story in both cases, though, is how a Vol used his offense to dominate KD. Now in his third year in the league, Williams has slowly been developing each year with Boston, and he finally is starting to come into his own with his play.

Everybody rightly talks about Jayson Tatum this series, and it’s well-deserved, but what’s underrated is how Williams and Horford were able to be so efficient offensively, and Williams specifically stood out there. He was the most efficient player on the team.

Durant has never played any other former Tennessee basketball players in the NBA Playoffs, so all we have to go on right now when he faces key Vols in big moments is that 2006 game and this past series. Both times, he got humiliated.

Williams and Lofton are two of the five greatest players to ever wear orange. In different capacities, they are now two players who have shown up one of the greatest players of this generation. That’s pretty impressive.