Boston Celtics middle Robert Williams might make season debut vs. Warriors

We’re formally within the vacation season, and it seems that the Boston Celtics need us to get within the festive spirit early this 12 months as a result of, in keeping with a report by Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe, it seems that Robert Williams might doubtlessly make his season debut on Saturday, December 10, towards the Golden State Warriors.

Curiously, sport six of the NBA Finals was the final time we noticed Williams donning a Celtics jersey in a aggressive setting, because the Celtics fell to defeat 103-90 to finish their season. Williams performed 33 minutes in that contest, scoring 10 factors and grabbing 7 rebounds.

Sadly, we by no means bought to see the Lousiana native at his greatest all through final season’s playoffs, as he had not too long ago returned from surgical procedure to repair a meniscus tear in his left knee and was significantly docile in comparison with his common game-changing self. After making an attempt to rehab his knee all through the summer season, it turned evident that Williams would require a second surgical procedure to ‘take away unfastened our bodies and deal with swelling’ — sidelining him for the opening three months of the season.

In that point, Boston has undergone considerably of a change, dropping Ime Udoka to a team-implemented suspension after which embracing a brand new offensive system applied by interim head coach Joe Mazzulla, a system that has seen the Celtics develop into a traditionally good offensive group and amass a 21-win document of their first 26 video games.

Nevertheless, for the entire enhancements we’ve seen within the Celtics’ offense, their protection has been far slower to spherical into type, and it’s solely been this previous week that Boston has cracked the highest 10 in defensive score. The Celtics shall be hoping that Williams’ return to the rotation will start to mark a pointy uptick of their general protection; in spite of everything, he did end final season as an ALL-NBA Defensive Second Staff choice and is one in all, if not the perfect, shot blocker and shot deterrents within the NBA.

In fact, we’re unlikely to see the perfect of Williams for at the very least a month as he begins to reacclimate himself to the pace and physicality of the NBA, but, as soon as he’s again in sport form, the Celtics are going to be considerably improved on each side of the ball, and that’s a scary proposition for the remainder of the league.