Taking a seat for a second straight
Robert Williams on shelf again for Game 5
In the spirit of caution, the Celtics sat out Rob Williams for the second straight game due to soreness in his left knee Wednesday night.
Ime Udoka said that though the swelling in Williams’ surgically-repaired left knee had gone down, the lingering soreness was serious enough to make the decision relatively simple.
Williams had been upgraded to questionable on Tuesday night.
“He’s going through some general soreness. The swelling went down and that’s why we were hopeful for tonight with the swelling getting better over the last two days,” said the Celtics coach. “But he still has some soreness and just gonna be overly cautious obviously coming off of surgery until it’s pain-free, rest until he’s ready.”
As Udoka has mentioned often, soreness and swelling were expected results from the surgery Williams underwent to repair a torn meniscus.
“The feedback is just that he has some soreness,” said Udoka. “Due to that, he’s restricted movement-wise because of soreness. Swelling has gone down, which is a positive obviously. What I said was last game was it’s not unexpected coming out of surgery. When you increase your minutes, at some point, you’ll have some soreness or possibly flare-up. I think the three days off in between, he had soreness after certain games, but you get that extra rest time. Now, with every other night, we’ll be more conscious if he has any kind of pain or swelling, which the swelling went down. We’ll hold him out until he’s ready.”
A downsized lineup
As such, Udoka was forced to go with a smaller lineup in Game 5, with Grant Williams starting and Daniel Theis playing a more prominent role off the bench.
“Grant will start again and Theis will get some more run and you saw last game we could downsize it or stay big, so we feel comfortable with that versatility-wise to go either lineup and do what we did when Marcus was out, and he was out last game, hold it down until he gets back,” said Udoka.
Though there is some concern about 35-yearold Al Horford continuing to play long minutes in Rob Williams’ absence — it clearly didn’t bother the veteran center in Game 4 — there is also an option to go smaller.
“It was a decision to make at that point. Grant was fine and Al was running long minutes, so we could’ve stayed big, but we liked what Derrick (White) was doing and how he was attacking, and Jayson (Tatum) and Jaylen (Brown), felt like they guarded (Giannis) Antetokounmpo better overall than the first few games so didn’t need to bring out bigs back, as well as challenging those guys to guard him a little bit tougher and using more forceful contact, and they did that.
“So gave us the luxury to bring Grant back for a stint and give us a small lineup, so obviously stressed that a little bit with their bigs out there, opened some things up driving the lane wise, but not a whole lot different than what Grant brings as far as stretching the court. So just another guy to attack and Derrick was extra aggressive so, we needed that.”
White on the upswing
White had his best scoring night of the playoffs in Game 4, shooting 4-for-6 for 11 points, though in terms of overall impact the guard has routinely been part of the solution, as evidenced by his plus-18 Monday — second only to Horford’s plus 20.
But it’s also good for a shooter to see the ball go through the net, too.
“Everybody likes when the ball goes through the net,” he said. “I just try to stay confident. The coaching staff and my teammates have done a great job picking me up when I’ve had a bad game. That’s the great thing about this team — when somebody has a bad game, somebody else is going to step up and pick them up. I just try to go out there and do whatever it takes to help us win. It’s always good to make shots.
“Just getting some extra reps in. Focus on the basics, the fundamentals that I’ve done since I was a kid. Trying to stay in the shot, not lean back, fall off of it. So just stuff like that and just getting extra reps in and just playing natural.”