Think back to the 2007-08 team. The young players were Rondo, Powe, Pruitt, Davis, and maybe you could include Tony Allen. No one was force fed minutes. They played the entire season to win every game. Rondo played because he proved he was good enough to play. Others played when they were needed. They didn't worry if they were developing Gabe Pruitt or not. That is the NBA. If Pritchard and Nesmith want to play more, they need to play better.
That's not really true. For instance, Glen Davis played 69 games at 13.6 minutes despite only averaging 4.5 points per game on .484 eFG%. In November he shot 43.5%, but saw his minutes go up in December. The same was true of second year player Leon Powe, who was given 14.4 minutes per game (although it can reasonably argued that his performance warranted those minutes).
So about what Grant Williams played the last couple of years? Rookies who were good enough played when they were needed to play. It was never the objective to play Davis more so that he could "develop", at least that is not what I saw.
Grant Williams has played, Pritchard played, rookies/young players are given time. That is different than force feeding minutes to them so that they can develop.
Nesmith has in general not played well. He does not deserve more minutes. Pritchard is a bit different. He may have suffered from a numbers crunch when Schroder was here but he also did not play as well this season as last for some reason.
I thought Grant was much worse last year after his rookie season and his minutes increased.
He was terrible. He tried to go all strength, in hopes he would battle in the low post and played at too heavy a weight that hurt his athletic ability. But Grant is really smart and figured it out, addressed this weakness, and worked on his shot and he is doing better. I think the path he was on prior was the wrong one. It looks like he did his on his own, he did not come to Summer League and worked his tail off. His big leap in improvement came there. The off season is where guys have the time to improve skills.
Which comes to the point. What player development have we seen. Rob definitely, Romeo, Nesmith have languished here. Pritchard it's too early to tell, but how much more skilled can he get? He has a finite athlete floor, I think he just needs to play quicker, push the ball and try to use his speed more and change the pace. I would contend Grant developed on his own.
Sometimes they just develop late...and we're only seeing the part of them that we see as fans, which is game days. We don't know how they are in practice and what improvements (if any) they have made towards the way that Ime wants them to play.
Sometimes they don't develop at all.
We all know about the misses in the draft, in terms of guys ready to contribute. How many strikes do they get? The problem is in the scouting department not the coach. You have to have the raw potential to develop!
In Brad's interview with Jay King a few weeks ago he brought up Timelord as an example of a player who didn't play much the first couple of years but kept working and had a breakthrough year in year 3.
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Payton Pritchard, Aaron Nesmith and Romeo Langford have been lost in the shuffle at times this season. What is the balance there between wanting veterans who can contribute and then possibly clearing room for some of the young guys to get more of a chance? What have you seen from some of those younger guys as you evaluate who could be a significant part of the team moving forward?
When I was coaching, I used to say this all the time: Just because somebody’s not playing minutes doesn’t mean they’re not improving. And I think that’s huge. And I think Rob Williams is the greatest example. Rob didn’t play much his first year, played a little bit his second year but was hurt for 50 games, played in one series out of three basically against Toronto, and now has taken two years later a step that’s pretty drastic as far as he can be a guy that can really, really help you win not only in the regular season but beyond. And I think we have to look at these guys as not only what they do in their minutes, but what they’re doing in practice, what they’re doing in the small group work. I believe in all three of them. Payton has gotten a lot more opportunity lately. Romeo got a lot more opportunity early. Romeo’s last game was one of his best, or the last game that he played a lot of minutes, the Phoenix game. And then Payton’s been pretty consistent. And I have no doubt about Aaron. Like, I don’t lose any sleep over what he can be. And he is in a little bit of a pinch numbers-wise with the guys we have. And we’ll see how that all shakes itself out. But regardless of if he plays zero minutes or 25 minutes, he’s going to have a successful career. He’s going to be a really good player.
https://theathletic.com/3073974/2022/01/17/brad-stevens-1-on-1-celtics-gm-talks-trade-deadline-dennis-schroders-future-and-evaluating-coach-ime-udoka/
Here's the comparison of Timelord's year 1 and 2 with Aaron and Payton's years 1 and 2 (caveat being that Timelord was injured in his year 2 and missed a lot of games). But it shows how players can make leaps and shouldn't necessarily be discarded after 2 poor seasons.
They get reps against Brown and Tatum all the time and those two are NBA handfuls. Guys who say you can't improve not playing probably never played past middle school. I know I learned a lot watching my freshman year. Practicing against older guys makes you more skilled and build confidence as you learn to compete and best them.
