Williams is very raw.
But I suspect Brad will find him meaningful minutes this season, early on.
As I stated previously, I expect him to be used about as much as we saw Semi used last season. In fact, I would be unsurprised if he gets more minutes than Semi this season. He can do things that Semi cannot. What remains to be seen is if he can hold his ground against strong post up guys the way that Semi could. Maybe not.
What really excites me about Williams is the prospect of grooming him for one thing in particular:
Defending Kevin Durant 1 on 1. Until now, we simply have not had a guy both long enough and athletic enough to do that. Jaylen has had good moments defending Durant (remember him blocking his shot in Garden last season?? Sweet),but in the course of a 7 game series, you need someone who can be delegated to guard him.
The Rockets did this with Cappella with some limited success last season in the play-offs. But my eye test tells me that Williams is superior to Capella in terms of lateral quickness. He could really frustrate him.
Williams will need to go through a lot of mistakes to get there. He still goes too easily for head fakes, for example. But that will come with experience. The Celtics need to give him as much real game experience now at the senior circuit level now.
Forget the Red Claws. I hope he spends very little time down there. It will be far more valuable to this team to give him a lot of experience defending long guys like Greek Freak, Durant, so that come play off time, we have our secret formula for beating the Warriors: NEUTRALIZE DURANT. I watched them play pre-season the other night, and they are still amazing.
Surprised someone came to the same thought as me
He can spend this whole year only to focus on how to play against the Warriors(it won't be only KD since they will switch) not only on D but on both ends of floor, he will be absolutely capable of guarding Curry-Klay-KD-Green ,Cousins will be the problem since he isn't ready to face strong postup bigs, but then you can always put Baynes on those.
For me the bigman rotation according to matchups should be(in that order)
Against small ball:AL-Rob-Theis as the only 5
Against bigC who postup:Baynes as 5, AL-Theis as 4
so they should all get plenty mins