Boston Celtics center Robert Williams (44) says of coming off the bench: “I’m a team player. If we’re rolling with something, I feel like we’re supposed to keep rolling with it.” AP Photo/Charles Krupa
The Boston Celtics took their time bringing back Robert Williams into the lineup after offseason surgery. That patience is starting to pay plenty of dividends on the court as the big man rounds into form.
The fourth-year center played his best game of the season on Tuesday night in a runaway 126-102 win over the Houston Rockets, posting a season high in points (11) and rebounds (15) in his fifth game back following offseason knee surgery.
Williams rounding back into form has been a welcome sign for a Boston offense that was in a slump initially during his return but Williams has done his best in a reserve role to fit into a more up-tempo system.
“This offense is a lot quicker, a lot more freedom,” Williams said. “They lay the baseline down and tell us they want us to be able to play. It’s just you’ve gotta find a way to come back in, help the team, kind of over into what they’re doing.”
The assumption by many was that Williams would be reinserted into the Celtics’ starting five after the success that group had last year. Interim coach Joe Mazzulla cautioned before Tuesday’s game that might not necessarily be the plan.
“Um, are we going to do that?” Mazzulla said of the starting question. “I just think it depends on what’s best for our team at the time. What is best for him? We’ve fluctuated the starting lineup a little bit throughout the year, which I think has given us some flexibility. But we’ve found consistency in what we have now. It’s just a matter of, if it makes sense we’ll do it. If it doesn’t, we won’t.”
After the game, Williams was on board with the possibility of remaining with the second unit.
“If we’re winning. If we win, whatever it takes, however we’ve gotta do it,” Williams said.
The athletic center acknowledged that Mazzulla spoke to him about coming off the bench before his return amid Boston’s hot start to the year.
“He talked to me about it before I came back, which was expected,” Williams said. “I’m a team player. If we’re rolling with something, I feel like we’re supposed to keep rolling with it.”
With parts of Boston’s second unit struggling in recent weeks and keeping Al Horford’s minutes down looking like a priority, keeping 48 minutes at center between Horford and Williams may be a promising path for Boston this year. For now, Williams is just focusing on fitting in as well as he did on Tuesday night.
“Just doing the natural stuff that I do,” Williams said of his role. “They’re telling me to get out, roll quick, create shots for other people.”
‘EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED’: There was some immediate concern when Jaylen Brown went down midway through the third quarter of Tuesday’s game after Houston’s Kevin Porter Jr. came flying in for an awkward, hard foul that got Brown in the face. Brown spent several minutes on the ground before eventually getting up to play the rest of the game.
While Porter got hit with the flagrant-1 foul, it lit a fire under Brown for the rest of the game. That extra juice was all Brown needed as he put up a season-high 39 points in the Celtics’ victory.
“Sometimes you get smacked in the face is exactly what you need in the middle of the game,” Brown said.
Brown went on to score 12 points in the third quarter after the flagrant. But he was on fire for most of the night, pouring in 15 first-quarter points to set the tone for the Celtics. While Boston let the visiting Rockets hang around for a bulk of the night, they started to pull away in the third quarter for the victory.
There was also another added element as Jayson Tatum put up 38 points in another impressive night for the Celtics’ star duo. It’s the sixth time already this season that Tatum and Brown each put up 30-plus points in the same night, signifying that their time is the present.
“We’re just two young guys that love to compete, love to try to help our team win every night and just try to get better,” Tatum said. “But we gotta win. We gotta win when it counts most for it to really mean something.”
The Celtics will take all that production they get from their young duo. Brown turned 26 this season while Tatum doesn’t turn 25 until next March. Both stars are entering into their prime at the perfect time as the Celtics are looking to get back to the NBA Finals.
“I think offense is better just to start the season compared to last year,” Brown said. “I think we’re both individually playing at a higher level at this time of the year compared to last year. The team is playing at a higher level. So we’re just better as a team than we were last year at this time.”
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