Boston Celtics: 3 players who must fill Jaylen Brown’s All-Star shoes
The Boston Celtics bleak situation somehow managed to get worse yesterday afternoon when it was announced that star forward Jaylen Brown would miss the rest of the season with a wrist injury.
Sitting in the seventh seed of the Eastern Conference, and staring down a potential play-in tournament game, the Celtics postseason aspirations appear to have evaporated into thin air.
While things don’t necessarily look great for the Celtics right now, the season is not over, and as we saw firsthand last season with the Miami Heat, any team can get hot and go on a crazy postseason run.
Boston hasn’t shown it much this season, but this team is loaded with talent that has the potential to make some noise in the postseason, even with Brown now out of the picture. With that in mind, here are three players who need to step up down the stretch here if the Celtics plan on making a late postseason push.
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No. 3: Boston Celtics wings Romeo Langford/Aaron Nesmith
Boston has a plethora of young wing players who will probably see an increase in opportunities now that Brown is out. Among Semi Ojeleye, Grant Williams, Romeo Langford, and Aaron Nesmith, one or two of these guys are going to have to step into the rotation and chip in 20-25 solid minutes a night now.
At this point, we already know what Ojeleye and Williams have to offer. They are strong defenders, but offensive liabilities. Ideally they would be utilized as “three and d” type players, but they both just don’t shoot the ball well enough to earn more minutes in the rotation.
Their main sources of offense are three point shots, but Williams shoots 36 percent and Ojeleye shoots 38 percent, which just isn’t good enough considering their volume of shots, and that they are basically just catch and shoot players at this point. There will be nights where the matchups play out in a way that results in either of these guys being called upon, but at this point, Williams and Ojeleye should only be used when they are needed on defense.
Langford is really a wild card at this point, as he has shown to be a very sound defender, but rarely translates that success to offense, where he is shooting a woeful 31 percent from the field. Combine that with his lengthy injury history, you see why Langford has struggled to crack the rotation up to this point.
Despite that, the upside with Langford is clearly much higher than that of Williams and Ojeleye. Langford has shown a knack at being able to get to the rim, in a way that other players on the roster struggle to do. And while he’s certainly not an effective three point shooter (27 percent on the season), he has the potential to be a real weapon if he can find his footing offensively.
The most likely player to step into this role is Aaron Nesmith. Nesmith has been a revelation as of late, as he’s scored at least 15 points in four of Boston’s last six games. For much of the season, Nesmith had struggled to find his shot, which was the reason Boston selected him with the 14th pick in last year’s draft. But Nesmith has grown much more comfortable in the offense as the season has progressed, and he seems likely to be one of the first guys called off the bench for Brad Stevens as the season wraps up.
Nesmith was a deadeye in college, and while he’s shooting 39 percent from three this season, he has shown that he can get to the rim as well, and has started to drive with more authority in recent contests. Nesmith is an active defender, as he plays with a recklessness that no one else on this team can offer. Expect Nesmith to get a big chunk of minutes off of the bench, but it would be great to see a guy like Langford step up and help out as well.