Boston Celtics: 3 regular season goals for Robert Williams in 2018-19

How Robert Williams can help the Boston Celtics on offense

Have you noticed that a lot of articles like this talk about how a player needs to shoot 3s to bring their game to the next level?

Spacing is a big deal in the NBA. There’s a reason shooting is almost a necessity for guards and wings; there’s a reason seemingly every big man is at least making an effort to become a passable floor spacer.

But that’s not what this preview will be about. There’s more to offense than shooting; for Williams’s sake, there better be. In college, 20 percent of his shots were “from the perimeter” (only six percent of his shots were 3s, so I’m assuming “from the perimeter” means jump shots), per the NBA’s draft profile. He scored only 0.43 points per jump shot (4th percentile). If he shot with that efficiency on spot-ups in the NBA, he’d be all the way down in the 2nd percentile with the likes of Jordan Mickey and Jon Leuer.

His frequency never should have been that high, but Texas A&M leading scorer Tyler Davis operated almost exclusively out of the post and, well, Williams had to stand somewhere. He is not anything close to a natural shooter, and while a solid jump shot would be a great asset for him, it’d be shocking to see him displaying it this season

Look at his shot chart, for goodness sake.

What he needs to do to help Boston this year has nothing to do with shooting. Williams’s best chance to be an impact maker on this end is not to shoot, but to do, well, this.

The Celtics have one of the most versatile lineups in the NBA. They’re all young guys with length and shooting and toughness; it’s an almost embarrassing treasure trove.

One thing they don’t have is a rim-running big. Think of the role Clint Capela fills with the Houston Rockets. He doesn’t shoot, and doesn’t need to. What he does is roll to the rim off picks and finish with incredible efficiency. That’s something Williams has shown the ability to do; his 1.505 points per shot around the rim in college placed him in the 97th percentile.

Being good at shots around the rim in college does not necessarily translate to NBA success. He’s going to be up against defenses that are much smarter and guys who are much more athletic; you can’t ignore that. But he has all the tools.

Scouts commend his ballerina-like feet, his excellent leaping ability, and his great instincts receiving lobs off the roll. That’s all already in place. The question for Williams at the next level is going to be whether he has the finesse to finish when high-level defenders are involved and, maybe more than that, whether he has the ability to consistently get to the right spot when he rolls.

You have to like the potential.

It’ll also be helpful if Williams could inject some post scoring into the second unit. Nobody would call him a monster; he’s not that kind of post scorer. But he has steadily improved his touch and footwork, and his 0.976 points per post-up possession in college placed him in the 82nd percentile. He carves out space effectively (though he has a bad habit of lazily settling for subpar position on occasion) and has the strength to overwhelm a lot of defenders.

Greg Monroe’s ability to create individual offense was a big help to a 2nd unit that lacked scoring punch last year. Williams won’t be asked to fill that role, and playing alongside Davis at Texas A&M meant he was rarely guarded by a team’s best post defender – who knows what he’ll look like against NBA players. But it’d certainly be helpful if he could convert in post situations in the sparing occasions that he’s called upon to generate offense.