Here’s why Brad Stevens says rookie Aaron Nesmith ‘will get opportunities’
"His work ethic’s excellent. He’s in the gym first every day."
Celtics rookie Aaron Nesmith has not played in six of Boston’s last seven games, and his one appearance was a two-minute stint late in the Celtics’ comfortable win over the Toronto Raptors last week.
Nesmith is in a difficult situation. The rookie was drafted in November and had no Summer League to prepare for the year. But part of the reason the Celtics picked him was to acquire a pure shooting wing with good size to plug into the lineup right away. Danny Ainge got Payton Pritchard, but his draft strategy was to acquire another contributor right away.
Still, Brad Stevens says he is encouraged by the little he has seen from Nesmith.
“The key is to prepare for (opportunities), just do what he’s doing,” Stevens said prior to Boston’s game against the Washington Wizards on Sunday. “His work ethic’s excellent. He’s in the gym first every day. He works with (Celtics assistant coach) Joe (Mazzulla), and I saw great strides in him even in those games where he played, where he had some mixed results. But you could see the difference in him from Game 1. When his stretch of time comes, when his opportunity comes, we want to put him in a position to handle that successfully.”
Stevens noted that Nesmith has gotten opportunities, but while the wing depth has been an issue in recent games, the two players in front of Nesmith — Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — are both going to play a lot of minutes.
Tatum, in particular, has had a heavy workload — 36 and 41 minutes in Boston’s games against the Raptors and Wizards respectively.
“(Tatum’s) minutes were too high in those back-to-back games, and we’ve just got to do our best to manage the big view and the game in and of itself,” Stevens said. “And that is a challenge. That is a real challenge when you’re a team that’s really a .500 team, and you’re going back-and-forth, and you’re not necessarily falling behind, you’re not really creating separation, you’re just one of many. You hopefully can get to the point where that balance can be a little bit better, but I will say this: it’s a lot easier to do that balance if you’re 10 games over .500, or if you’re 15 games over .500 or whatever the case may be. But it’s something we have to be mindful of.”
What that means for Nesmith is a little unclear. The Celtics would like to limit minutes for Brown and Tatum, but those two stars are holding Boston above water at 13-12.
But in 10 games, Nesmith has not looked like a plug-and-play addition. He’s 9-for-29 from three, and the defense has been nearly six points per 100 possessions worse in Nesmith’s (admittedly non-representative) sample size. Without minutes, it’s unclear how Nesmith could prove himself or improve after the Maine Red Claws opted out of their season in the G-League’s Disney World bubble.
“It’s not an easy position to be in,” Stevens conceded. “But he’ll get opportunities.”
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