The Celtics, Who Heavily Rely On Robert Williams, Cannot Rely On Robert Williams

After a deflating 4-point loss to the lottery-bound Portland Trail Blazers on 21st January, the Boston Celtics fell back to a 23-24 record, and were impressing no-one. They might not even have made the playoffs.

Since then, however, they have been the best team in the NBA. A run of 24 wins in their next 28 games, including many impressive wins against quality opposition, saw the team perform one of the most complete 180-degree midseason turnarounds in recent memory. And at the core of it was starting center, Robert Williams.

On the season as a whole, the Celtics have the best defense in the NBA, yet since that 21st January loss, it has been the best by miles. The Celtics have a 103.6 defensive rating since that time, a hefty 5.1 points ahead of their Eastern Conference rival Miami Heat in second place, with the gap from first to second being bigger than the gap from 2nd to 18th. They have been a defensive force for two consecutive months, and Williams’s ability to cover ground was the crux of it.

On the season, Williams was averaging 10.0 points, 9.6 rebounds, 2.2 blocks and 2.0 assists per game, while anchoring the NBA’s best defense. The Celtics and head coach Ime Udoka have constructed a defensive system around him, where, rather than defend much on a man-to-man basis, Williams lingered in the right areas, starting in the corner or the baseline and getting across from the weakside to anyone who looked like they were about to make a play. He played the NBA’s equivalent role to the NFL’s free safety role. And because of his combination of size, length, speed and leap, he did this to a level only a few others in the league could.

The use of the past tense here, though, is deliberate. Shams Charania was first to report that Williams will now miss time, estimated to be 4-6 weeks, due to a torn meniscus.

There is no way to replace a player whose defensive IQ, tools, effort and athleticism. made him a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. But the loss will be felt offensively, too. That same physical profile that sees him dominate on defense also gives him tremendous vertical spacing offensively; if a play got bogged down, there was always the chance of a lob over the top to the Time Lord, or an offensive rebound over the traffic. The loss will be a palpable one.

Boston, importantly, has in-house replacements of some calibre. A resurgent Al Horford is having a second wind of a season, particularly defensively, and his role and rotation minutes can be adjusted to make him a full-time five, ensuring that the position is covered with quality. Also providing a quality option is Daniel Theis, reacquired at the trade deadline in a move that now has proven to be hugely important.

Those players, though, are very different to Williams, who gives Boston dimensions that they cannot get elsewhere. The Celtics, provisionally, are looking at chippy and physical defensive playoff battles against the Philadelphia 76ers, Toronto Raptors, Milwaukee Bucks, or some combination therefore. Much as Williams embodies the freelance role, his size is also needed to be able to handle opponents like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid.

Grant Williams types do not have that size. One need only need to look to this week, and see how Nikola Jokic feasted on being defended by Paul Millsap (halfway to a 50-point triple-double by half time) to see that at the center spot, size still runs the show.

Theis, at least, does have the potential to contribute in an expanded role. Along with more ball-handling and shooting on the perimeter than Williams – who never did any of either – he sets good screens and has more burst than Horford, if much less than Williams. His passing skills are roughly on a par with Williams, too, and while he is not the ever-present threat over the top, he will at least get out and run. As third-stringers go, he is excellent.

It will nevertheless be a case of papering over the cracks. The Celtics were perhaps the best team in the East with an ideal match-up for the other best team in the East; now, they will be more conventional and at risk of a significant match-up disadvantage.

For this reason, they have come to rely on Robert Williams. But because of the way that he does his business, perhaps they cannot rely on him.

In his young career to date, Williams has now missed time on 30 different occasions. For one so young, that is a lot, and it speaks to the high-risk style of his. Rare is the human body that moves like his does at the size that his is; rarer still is the body that can withstand all those jumps, second jumps and quick movements.

It is far too early to speculate what if any long-term side effects this meniscus injury will have on Williams’s career. But perhaps a parallel can be found in the case of Tyson Chandler.

Injury-prone in the early stages of his time in the NBA with various ailments – including a near-complete missed season with a back injury from a freak landing – Chandler slowly evolved his game to prolong his career. The high-flying shot-blocking of his youth gave way over time to more grounded positional defense, something he proved no less effective at as his IQ developed over the years. And in the end, Chandler played until he was nearly 40.

Perhaps Williams, in time, will do the same. Perhaps Williams, in time, will start to have to. As good as he has gotten in this last two years, the priority must be how many games can he play, rather than how much ground can he cover in each one. Will watching him land ever stop being worrisome?