One mistake caused Robert Williams to doubt his productive night vs. Pacers
"I’m not coming along fast enough slipping up like this."
Related Links
-
Boston Celtics
Celtics’ Jayson Tatum on late miss vs. Pacers: ‘I should have put more pressure on the defense’
-
Boston Celtics
Sabonis hits late basket, sends Pacers past Celtics 108-107
-
Boston Celtics
Here’s why former Knicks guard Iman Shumpert had a bad first impression of Celtics’ Paul Pierce
-
NBA
So much for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving needing time to jell. The Nets have come out firing.
Boston Celtics big man Robert Williams played the best game of his season to date on Sunday evening in his team’s 108-107 loss to the Indiana Pacers.
Williams dropped in 12 points on 6-for-7 shooting to go with four rebounds and four steals. As time wound down, Brad Stevens left him in the game over veterans Tristan Thompson and Daniel Theis — a sign of trust Williams has not often earned thus far.
Still, as he sat down to speak to the media afterward, Williams was visibly dejected.
“I feel like I’m definitely coming along, making progress,” Williams said. “But like I said, I’m not coming along fast enough slipping up like this.”
The slip Williams referenced was Indiana’s final play of the game. Trailing by one, Pacers center Domantas Sabonis faked a hand-off at the top of the key, then drove to the rim. The fake briefly threw Williams, who scrambled to recover and defend the play. He was too late — Sabonis laid the ball in, and Williams was whistled for a foul. Sabonis missed the free throw and Williams collected the rebound — his fourth in 22 minutes — but the damage was done, and he doubled over as Brad Stevens called timeout to hit the ball hard on the floor in frustration.
Williams was still stewing about the play half an hour later.
“I feel like at the end of the day we didn’t stop them when we were supposed to,” Williams said. “We messed up the defensive coverage. So really, all the other stuff goes out the window.”
For Williams, the ending was a disappointing punctuation mark on one of the better games of his young career. In addition to his sparkling stat line, he continued to show flashes as a passer. Meanwhile, one of his four steals nearly helped the Celtics improbably win the game — with the shot clock off and Boston down by one, Williams tore the ball away from T.J. Warren without fouling and found Marcus Smart for a transition layup that gave the Celtics a one-point lead.
But Sabonis’s layup erased that advantage, and Jayson Tatum’s attempt at a game winner clanked off the rim as time expired.
Jaylen Brown wasn’t willing to saddle Williams with all of the blame for the Celtics’ defensive miscommunication, calling the third-year big “really important.”
“I think that last play was tough,” Brown said. “I don’t think that was all necessarily his fault. We’ve got to communicate better and give a better effort.”
According to Stevens, Williams’s energy stood out to the coaching staff and kept him on the floor as the Celtics tried to close out.
“Played hard. He played really hard,” Stevens said. “Obviously we were very low energy in the third quarter and that cost us the game. Any time you give up 40 in a third quarter on the road to a good team, you’re probably going to lose. To our guys’ credit, they hung in there and got back in the game. But Rob was one of the reasons why, because he brought a good deal of energy to the table.”
All of the postgame compliments weren’t enough to boost Williams, however.
“I was brought in the game to bring the energy so that’s what I was trying to do,” he said. “But like I said, we messed up the coverage. Me personally, I messed up the coverage.”
Get Boston.com's browser alerts:
Enable breaking news notifications straight to your internet browser.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com