Mike Richman said in the video I linked to earlier that Robert Williams works great as a "roamer" on defense. Boston would put Williams on the other teams worst offensive player so Williams could come out of nowhere on help defense. That's his best case scenario for the Blazers. When Horford and Williams played together, they got north of 80% of the rebounds according to Richman. You did not get many second shots. When/if Ayton and Williams are playing together, the Trail Blazers could(should) be an elite rebounding team that can run.
No matter how people view him today, we wouldn't have made the conf finals without Enes Kanters rebounding. That guy could clean the glass.
AlexHoops says (and shows) that Robert Williams is a much better passer than the stats show. He has a great feel for the game. He even recorded a triple double on new year's eve 2021. video dated Mar 16, 2022 This one also. Using Rob Williams as a high-post passer. How the Boston Celtics Used Robert Williams to Unlock Their Offense AlexHoops: It's coincidentally very similar to how the Warriors operate with Draymond Green as the facilitator surrounding him with shooters and constant motion and cutting. Perimeter shooting from your front court still is at a premium, but this approach to offense is proof of concept that it's not mandatory to have front court spacing as much as it's important to have a center that can make quick decisions and find guys making good cuts if your goal is to have your team execute an offensive game plan that prioritizes off-ball movement on the wings. I think this is where the quote-unquote center position is heading. To where you don't have to have five 3-point shooters on the floor. Sep 30, 2022
Right. I think somebody already pointed this out, but his block % has fallen from 12 as a rookie to 5 last year.
"Celtics' all-defensive center Robert Williams III underwent a left knee scope and is expected to miss 4-to-6 weeks, potentially sidelining Williams III for the start of the 2022-23 season. The news of Williams' recent surgery raise concerns he may be dealing with early arthritis in his left knee, according to the Pro Basketball Docs. If that is the case, he will likely require more rest days to sustain his knee health over the season. Among the Celtics' community, the surgery has raised more questions about the elite defensive force's long-term health. Bulls' young point guard Lonzo Ball underwent a similar procedure in January to treat a meniscus and bone bruise injury and is still sidelined by lingering soreness. Williams dropped in the 2018 Draft because of bilateral knee tendonitis and has been a limited contributor for most of his career to manage his knees." https://sicscore.com/nba/updates/ro...surgery-signals-potential-left-knee-arthritis
I think the Blazers will have to work hard to manage Timelord's minutes. And cross their fingers; and pray
Yeah I’ve seen that story like 10 times, but why the words TimeLord? Is that some comic book character? Why not LateAss?
“Instead of calling me ‘Robert,’ they call me ‘Time Lord.’ But I don't know where that sh*t came from,” Williams said. https://www.sportskeeda.com/basketball/why-robert-williams-called-time-lord After being drafted No. 27 by Boston in the 2018 NBA draft, Williams was scheduled for his introductory conference call with reporters. However, Williams overslept and missed the call as well as his flight to Boston. It probably wasn’t the start to his NBA career that he envisioned, but luckily for the big man, Celtics fans didn’t take it personally. Instead, a die-hard Celtics fan named Ryan Hebert made the most of Williams’ mishap by coming up with a nickname for him - The Time Lord. The moniker then quickly caught on, starting with Celtics' Twitter and then into the mainstream media as well. During an interview with Mass Live in 2018, Hebert broke down why he chose the nickname. He said that he had been scouting Williams as a potential Celtics draft prospect for two years and always knew he was going to be a Celtic eventually. So Hebert joked that Williams wasn’t actually late for his press conference but that he was instead operating on "a different timeline." “So (we) started joking that he wasn’t late, he was operating on a different timeline concurrent to the one we are in, as evidenced by the fact that I knew he was a Celtic two years before he was a Celtic,” Hebert said. “And we would do it with people taking themselves really seriously and they’d get very mad at us for thinking they were too uptight. So, from there he became a Time Lord, like the characters in Doctor Who whose time travel can tie together terrible holes in the plot of a shoddy script.” Hebert then did his best to simplify his explanation of the nickname for those who were still confused: “Basically, Time Lord boiled down to the prediction of drafting him in 2018 and also defending him against uptight people who were earnestly acting like they've never been late to work in their lives," Hebert said. “We are online so much that we have to do absurd things to show people how stupid it is to say a mega-athlete with a savant-like feel for timing, blocks and passing is a bust because they missed a flight. We all love Robert and are pulling for him as a pro and as a person and this is our bizarre way of going about it.” Upon his Time Lord nickname catching on early in his rookie season, Robert Williams was very confused as to why everyone was calling him that: “Instead of calling me ‘Robert,’ they call me ‘Time Lord.’ But I don't know where that sh*t came from,” Williams said. However, the nickname has since grown on Williams as he now finds it fitting for his time-stopping blocked shots: “So when I got drafted, I missed a press conference over the phone,” Williams told Sky Sports.“And they start calling me Time Lord, like being late. But I got on the court playing and it was saying like, ‘Oh, he’s stopping time to go over there and block shots.’ So, I can’t hate on that, it was decent. I liked it. I’ve been rocking with Time Lord ever since.”
Jokic + anyone, Embiid + anyone Williams has had multiple surgeries on his knees. Can anyone list guys who's knees went under the knife early on as much as his have and then gone on to a long productive career? Portland's young talent is years away. If RW is healthy and productive this season, I hope Joe continues to play kingmaker and moves him at the deadline for more future assets to pair with his youngins. STOMP
However, looking again, i see that his rebound % has held steady over the years and is much better than his first year. So the blk % decline could be due to something besides his knees, possibly a different emphasis on defense?
