By admin 
If you ask anyone on the Celtics roster, they’ll probably tell you Williams is about as important to their team as guys like Mobley and Banchero. But in reality, his inconsistent health and minutes have made him more of a luxury than a centerpiece. If his health improves, the minutes could come into focus.
Williams has spent time this offseason working to build out his offensive game and develop his touch to expand beyond the restricted circle. Not only would this make him a more involved scorer, but it would finally open up his passing skills to become a part of the system rather than just something he can flash randomly. His defense is already elite enough to group him with two of the league’s top young bigs, so this is where he can prove he belongs.
If Williams can take this step forward, it unlocks so much of the half-court offense the Celtics want to run in theory but often struggle with because they were so drive-and-kick dependent. If there’s one thing the Smart-Porziņģis trade confirmed, it’s that Brad Stevens and Joe Mazzulla want to find easier ways to get the ball into the middle of the defense and then pass out of there quickly to create open shots for the team’s best players.
Boston took another step last year toward decentralizing roles by emphasizing pace-and-space offense, trying to just get shooters into position early so anyone can get an easy shot. But that led to plenty of nights where the team would have high-volume, poor-accuracy shooting performances and then struggle to string together multiple quality half-court possessions in the fourth quarter.
While giving infinite trust to everyone to hit their shots is a great motivational heuristic, Boston needs more concrete solutions to offensive lulls. That’s why they sacrificed two players who upheld their defensive presence to add another bona fide three-level scorer in Porziņģis. The Danilo Gallinari signing last offseason acknowledged the Celtics had to find someone in their rotation who was composed on the ball and could still be in control when he attack the paint.
It’s also an insurance policy against Horford’s decline, as the 37-year-old went from being an elite shooter in the regular season to hitting just 29.8 percent from deep in the playoffs. His defense was great for so much of the playoff run, but he would have plenty of moments where he couldn’t keep up. Dropping all the way from 4A to 5A in this year’s player tiers shows just how much that matters, so bringing Porziņģis in will help mitigate further inconsistencies.
But the depth can only get them so far. From Giannis Antetokounmpo to Steph Curry to Nikola Jokić, the last three champions were all led by a Tier 1 star. You would have to go back to the Spurs in 2014 to find a title winner who didn’t have someone considered an MVP-caliber player by the end of that season. Perhaps that’s where the Celtics have fallen just short, as Tatum is still sitting in Tier 2A even as Partnow acknowledges he looks like a Tier 1 player 90 percent of the time. Even with all the changes they are making, the Celtics need Tatum to jump to the next tier.
That gap is small, but it’s tangible. The Tier 1 players have a few core elements to their offensive repertoire that make it difficult to be stopped. Even when their shot is cold and they can’t get to the line, they can put up assists or take it to the post. They will find one way to make a strong imprint on all four quarters every game. You can’t really take them out of running the show in crunch time.
Tatum is there most of the time and maybe if he hadn’t rolled his ankle at the beginning of Game 7 against Miami, this narrative would’ve faded. But the Celtics’ penchant for only playing their best when their back is against the wall sticks out as an outlier in this league and it all channels up to Tatum.
Some of that is inherent to his style of play and the stage of his career. Antetokounmpo and Jokić didn’t win the title until their age-26 and -27 seasons, respectively. Tatum doesn’t turn 26 until March. While they are both physical behemoths who could get anywhere they want on the court, Tatum’s whole development arc has been about becoming that kind of player instead of relying on his perimeter skills.
As Tatum and Brown’s 3-point shooting efficiency fell off once they took over the offense these past two years, it’s become clear their ability to control the floor with their physicality and processing of the game will determine how much their ceiling rises from here. All of their battles against the best players in the NBA over the past few years have made it clear that the playoffs are a mental battle more than anything, and that’s the last hurdle for Boston’s leaders to clear.