C’s Williams flexes range
Rookie more than happy to shoot
LAS VEGAS — In the process of dropping back out of pick-and-roll coverage to stay with his man, Grant Williams kept finding bodies in the way. Most of them landed on the floor.
“Kind of weird, I knocked like five guys onto the ground today,” the Celtics rookie power forward said after last night’s 96-82 summer league win over Philadelphia. “Normally it doesn’t really happen, but with the spacing you have to be able to tag and get back to your man. So I didn’t realize you had to hit guys pretty hard to get back.”
So Williams likes contact. Brad Stevens and his staff can put that check in the plus column. But they already knew that about the young power forward from Tennessee.
What seems to also be coming together — again early on — is his willingness to shoot. At 6-foot-7, Williams has already heard his fill about being undersized — a reality that cries out for him to take 3-pointers.
Last night he shot 2-for-3 from downtown, including a smooth dagger off a kick-out with two minutes left, as part of a 12-point, 4-for-8, six-rebound Celtics debut.
After a week of closed practices, Williams has unveiled an important part of the plan.
“It’s something he’s working on,” said Celtics assistant and summer league coach Scott Morrison. “I believe he’s been working on it since school ended and it’s one thing that coach Stevens and myself and the other coaches are really encouraging him to let it go when he’s open, to be a spacer and to really develop that spot-up 3, and he did a good job tonight a couple times shot-faking when the closeout was coming a little too hard and I know he got fouled one time. He did a good job with that, but also he made his presence felt on the glass.”
The key, considering the number of players who develop a nasty case of hesitancy when it’s time to take an NBA 3-pointer, is to step into the shot. No problem there, said Williams.
“I’ll let it go. But I also want to play smart and be able to make the right read,” he said. “Not just go out there and me settling and jacking up a shot. So it’s a matter of understanding to pick the ones that come to you, but you also have to understand that when you get run off the line you need to make the next play whether that’s creating for someone else or getting to the basket and creating for yourself.
“It’s not only important for my development, but it’s important for this team,” Williams added. “Being able to space the floor for guys like Kemba (Walker), guys we have in the regular season. And the summer league team, being able to get Carsen (Edwards) an option to get a wide-open shot for myself and knock it down so people can’t lock in on him and all the other guys we have. … It’s not only important for me, it’s important for the team.”
It sounds like Williams has Stevens’ voice on a constant loop, because the Celtics coach couldn’t have put it better himself.
“I think getting someone like coach Stevens to say to him, ‘Hey we want you shooting that, we believe in you, let it fly,’ and kind of reminded him yesterday if he misses seven in a row, he should take the eighth one, and if he hits seven in a row he should take the eighth one,” said Morrison. “It doesn’t matter what happened before. So he’s a smart kid, I think he can realize that. Still obviously hard to get out there and do something you’re not necessarily comfortable doing, but every free moment of practice we’re getting him shooting those 3’s and hopefully by the end of the week here, he’ll show a bit of a propensity to knock them down.”
At this stage, anyway, it doesn’t sound like much encouragement is needed for Williams to search out his place beyond the arc. His role at Tennessee, too, may have masked his range.
“It’s just over time. Coaches have a tendency, as well as in Boston, they’ve been helping me,” he said. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t shoot last year more so that our team had a lot of shooters around me.
“It was like that would be a good shot, but we could get a great shot forcing the double team with a guy like Admiral (Schofield) shooting 42 percent, guys like that, so, it’s just a matter of going out here and doing what I can for the team,” Williams added. “They encouraged me to shoot it and I was like ‘wow that’s kind of different.’ Normally I’m the one that’s catching the ball with his back to the basket, so it was really nice to be able to play a different way.”