Boston Celtics 2020-21 individual players grades: Robert Williams III

Now that the 2020-21 Boston Celtics season is firmly in the rear-view mirror, it’s possible to spend some time taking stock of how each player did with the opportunity he had.

To that end, we are grading every player who put in time on the basketball court for the Celtics this season, including all 15 members of the regular roster, both two-way players and the players the team cut or traded away. That’s 21 players altogether, and today’s focus is starting center Robert Williams III. The hyper-vertical big man has struggled to stay on the floor due to injury throughout his pro career, but has also started to flash some truly transcendent play this season.

Let’s assess his performance in the 2020-21 NBA season.

Offense

Williams continued to expand his game, his shot selection slowly moving more away from the basket -- even if still almost entirely within 10 feet of the basket. Still, it's helping improve spacing for his teammates on top of the warping effect of his unreal verticality. Add in increasingly complex and frequent passing, and Boston may have something really special in the works with Timelord. Grade: A- https://twitter.com/TheCelticsWire/status/1407337616220037120?s=20

Defense

The Texas A&M still makes his fair share of mistakes biting on pump-fakes and when covering notorious grifters, but has largely left the egregious defensive errors of his first two seasons behind. Williams has also added some muscle to make it harder to push him around in the post, and has grown more skilled when reviewing the block/tip-pass/rebound calculus. He'll need to work on the elite foul-drawing covers he can expect to see in the postseason in Boston's next campaign, but made real progress on this end in the last one. Grade: B https://twitter.com/TheCelticsWire/status/1407292377543360520?s=20

Intangibles

The Louisiana native has had a worrisome health history over the course of his still-young pro career with 2020-21 the first time he's crossed the 40-game threshold, even fighting through pain to play in the postseason. But hand-wringers should take note that while he only played 52 contests this season, it was in a truncated 72-game season, meaning he played more than 72% of the season -- a considerable improvement health-wise for a player who'd never even hit the 50% mark previously. This will of course be a factor in any extension talks, but for now, we're focused on last season, where Williams stepped into a larger role largely successfully. Grade: C+ https://twitter.com/TheCelticsWire/status/1407247000555425798?s=20

Overall

While we aren't out of the woods yet concerning Williams' ability to stay on the floor for health and defensive reasons both, at least in the highest of stakes games for the latter, Timelord has clearly shown he deserves a shot in this league as a starting center. It's tantalizing to think what he can do if he can stay healthy and actually practice, but given what we saw from him in a season where both of those things were an issue for him, we have to give him a very solid grade for the season. Grade: B This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook! [lawrence-related id=52340,52314,52309,52216] [listicle id=52344]

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