The Boston Celtics brought in one of their largest rookie classes in franchise history this summer with seven first-year players joining the team for the 2019-20 NBA season.
With nearly half the 82-game NBA season behind us, Celtics Wire took stock of the prodigious class of prospects to see how the cadre of rookies is taking to life at the NBA level.
Working our way up in reverse draft order, we’ll take a short look at what each has done compared to reasonable expectations for each given the contexts of how they became part of the team. At the end, we’ll hand out letter grades based on expectations coming into the season.
In other words, we’ll used a nuanced lens to analyze the on-court production and development to date instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, because nuance matters when you have to cram seven new players onto a team with lofty postseason goals and only 17 slots (counting two way contracts).
The Undrafted
The Celtics saw their roster upended with the chaos that followed an equally-disorganized 2018-19 campaign, with the team needing bodies to replenish its roster — particularly the frontcourt — after a number of high-profile defections.
They accomplished this with a few key veteran signings, but also brought in a few rookies who weren’t drafted to fill out the depths of the rotation with an eye for developing them into rotation players with a little luck; we’ll start here.
Tacko Fall
While there are times it feels like the Senegalese center has already arrived based on fan reactions to him checking into a game (or for that matter, the numbers of fan votes for the 2020 NBA All-Star game), it’s important to remember he’s only played in four contests at the NBA level, and has averaged just 5.3 minutes of play in them.
The paucity of run with the Celtics has been offset by strong play at the G League level, the UCF prospect still struggling with basic defensive concepts and bread-and-butter offensive tactics — though he has made noteworthy progress on both ends, too.
While he won’t likely play his way into a regular contract this season, Fall shows signs of shaping into a useful rotation player perhaps as soon as next season, already recording 4.3 points, 2.5 boards and .5 blocks per game in such limited minutes.
Javonte Green
Initially seen in Las Vegas Summer League as the dunking machine the Radford product just so happens to be, Green has since shown himself to be an excellent defender and high-energy depth player able to come into almost any contest and add some quick points off the bench.
Despite Green’s uber-athletic in-game dunking, it’s the other things he does that earned him a spot on Boston’s regular season roster, and he’s done well with the 7.8 minutes per game he’s being given.
Logging 2.9 points and 1.5 rebounds a contest on a very efficient 55.4 % from the floor, the Virginian looks like he might play his way into another NBA deal if he can maintain this level of play.
Vincent Poirier
Vinnie Sexpants — as he has become known thanks to Weird Celtics Twitter — hasn’t gotten much run this season, but that’s not entirely his fault.
When the season started, he had the biggest adjustments of any player to make save perhaps Tacko Fall, coming from a league and system that forced him to change how he plays the game. Not long after he started to find his footing, he broke a finger, and just returned to action this week.
Even still, he’s managed to get 4.9 minutes of playing time per contest to date, putting up 1.7 points and 1.5 boards per game. His efficiency needs work, as he’s not shooting 3-pointers yet still only connecting on 41.2 % of his shots and shooting almost all of his shots near-basket.
While it’s probably too soon to judge his adaptation to the NBA because of how his season has gone, he’s definitely got his work cut out for him in the second half of the season if he wants to stick in this league.
The Second-Rounders
Normally, it’s almost unheard of to strike gold in the latter third of the NBA Draft (Isaiah Thomas an obvious exception), but the Celtics might have done exactly that with one of their two selections in the second round of the 2019 NBA Draft.
That their other selection has hit some road bumps is hardly unexpected, however. We’ll begin with the 51st overall pick in 2019, then take a look at the aforementioned hiccups of No. 33.
Tremont Waters
Passed over by many a general manager currently kicking themselves for the missed opportunity, Connecticut native Tremont Waters would have played his way into a regular contract by now if there weren’t other, also-enticing prospects already filling roster slots.
The two way floor general has been lighting up the G League, having garnered Player of the Week and Month honors — the former twice — already this season.
Averaging 4.4 points, 0.6 rebounds and an assist over 7.8 minutes of playing time with the parent club, Waters might appear to be on par with most of the other rookies already mentioned, but unlike anyone save Green for short stretches, Waters’ playing time has not been in garbage time.
Successfully helping cover Kemba Walker and Marcus Smart’s extended absences for Boston, the LSU product shows he could already be a backup point guard at the NBA level despite his 5-foot-10 stature.
Carsen Edwards
The Purdue product has a reputation as a dead-eye shooter, and many expected Edwards to be a near-seamless fit at the NBA level.
But the Houston native has struggled to connect since joining the league, hitting just .305 from deep and overall. While not living up to the bench assassin role he was hoped to take on this season, it’s not unusual for younger guards to need time to adjust to NBA game speed and complexity.
However, his lack of success in the G League concerning; while he is shooting better at a lower level of play, his 3-point shot is still a concern, connecting from beyond the arc just 27.1 % of the time while shooting 8.4 attempts per game in the developmental league.
The good news is his 2-point shooting is a respectable-if-not-impressive 42.4 % in the G League. The bad news is he’s only hitting 68.8 % of his free throws at that level, which would be alarming if not for the fact he’s doing the same shot at a 84.6 % rate with the Celtics.
Edwards is perhaps the biggest question mark going forward based on early returns, but as a competent defender for a rookie, he may turn out to be what he was hoped to with enough reps to get his confidence back.
The First-Rounders
Most of the league’s talent has come from the first 30 selections in the NBA Draft (with notable exceptions), so the Celtics are hopeful at least one of the two prospects they took in this range can become part of the team’s longer-term future (or part of a trade package boosting it).
Injuries and bad luck has made assessing one of the duo a bit harder than we might otherwise like, while the player deemed most battle-ready of all the rooks coming into the season has been living up to that assessment.
Grant Williams
The cerebral Tennessee product entered the team’s regular rotation with a case of the yips so bad it made Carsen Edwards look like Steph Curry, but has since gone on to hit 44 % from deep in January.
Unlike Edwards, Williams has been a savvy defender able to impact games even when he was going .000 from three while logging 3.4 points, 2.3 boards, 1.1 assists and 0.5 blocks per 15.3 minutes of playing time.
His stable play earned him the most minutes of any rookie with the parent club and a comparatively secure position with his ability to guard bigger forwards and quick wings, and his passing has been a pleasant surprise.
Expect Williams to take on an even bigger role by season’s end if he can keep up with the 82-game grind.
Romeo Langford
The Indiana product has been hampered by injury, but the one-time top-five prospect fell into the Celtics’ draft range because he was injured, after all.
That said,it wouldn’t be fair to call the first-year wing ‘injury-prone’ just yet, as most of what has caused him to miss time this season — wet floors, sprains and illness — were truly beyond his control.
Concern over his shot (impacted by torn ligaments in his hand during his collegiate stint) has waned a bit with some run for the No. 14 overall pick in both the G League and NBA, though he is still struggling to connect from deep at any level, with his best 3-point percentage being just .222 with Boston.
His healthy 55.6 % from two and 87.5 % from the stripe implies he, like Edwards, should improve with time, and Langford has played well in meaningful minutes in December and January.
While he has a long way to go as a defender, he’s also not so bad he plays himself off the floor, and has shown flashes of being a special scorer with some of his near-basket buckets.
Grades
These reflect, again, how these prospects have fared compared to preseason expectations, not based on their hoped-for ceilings or how they have performed vs. their non-rookie peers.
Tacko Fall: A-
Tacko deserves a near-perfect grade, as he wasn’t expected to do more than make progress in the G League. He’s contributed to non-garbage time play already this season, though, as close to a reasonable ceiling as we’d likely get.
Javonte Green: B+
Brought on to do more than dunk, the hope has been that the Radford product could come off the bench and score and defend when needed — and he’s done that. Nothing more, nothing less earns a solid grade in return.
Vincent Poirier: C-
Mr. Sexpants was never going to be leaned on very hard, but he hasn’t been around enough to be leaned on much even if needed. Even considering the things beyond Poirier’s control, his first 41 could have gone better, though.
Tremont Waters: A+
You could hardly ask for more out of a player who nearly went undrafted. Contributing meaningful minutes at the NBA level and dominating the G League earns the Connecticut native a perfect grade.
Carsen Edwards: C+
There was (and is) hope the former Boilermaker can provide some depth shooting, but like many rookies, he’s struggled at the NBA level. While he may soon find his shot, for now it’s been a bit of a letdown to date.
Grant Williams: A+
The sole rookie cracking the regular rotation, and for good reason. While his offense and perimeter game in particular may still need work, he’s able to fit into Boston’s schema on both ends as a frosh, which is very promising.
Romeo Langford: B-
Langford was the hardest to grade, as there wasn’t much in the way of expectations coming into the season to start with. He looks to have fixed his shot, and played some non-garbage time minutes with limited success. While we’d like to see more from a lottery pick, with all the injuries, it’s hard to penalize the Indiana product worse than a B-.
Putting it all together
The second half of the season may see some leaps forward by a few of the seven-man rookie cadre, and will almost certainly see some take steps back as the toll of a long NBA season begins to wear.
But despite the lack of a true star emerging from this season’s incoming class of first-year players, none of them look like a mistake given how they joined the team, and a few have flashed hints they could be special.
It’s very rare to take more than a pair of prospects and have them all end up as NBA players, but there’s a small chance all of the players joining the Celtics could stick in the league beyond their current contract.
That’s not to say they are the players of the future for this franchise — or maybe even players of the present. With trade season in full swing, one could be dealt before the day is done, never mind the Feb. 6 deadline.
But whatever their fate is, so far the extensive class of rookies brought on by the Celtics has had a passing first half of the NBA season, and that is something to be positive about, even if it isn’t the solution to all of Boston’s more recent woes.
