Boston Celtics stud: Aaron Nesmith
To be fair, there were plenty of other players that could have made this spot today with Jaylen Brown and Payton Pritchard both receiving strong consideration.
That being said, coming into the game we already had a pretty good understanding of what the roles and what type of production of these two aforementioned players would have and, not so much to our surprise, they delivered.
Aaron Nesmith, on the other hand, comes into his sophomore season with high expectations as he looks to prove to the masses why he was taken with the C’s lone lottery pick back in the 2020 NBA Draft.
In game one, he’s already set his second year up right with a tremendous showing.
Logging a little over 14 minutes on the night, the wing put up an impressive stat line of 10 points and three boards on a stellar 80 percent shooting from the field and nearly 67 percent shooting from deep.
What’s more impressive is all of these numbers came about in crunch time, during a tightly contested fourth quarter when this type of production is needed the most (didn’t miss a single shot during the final 12 minutes of action).
His level of play only furthers our very own Dallas Malloy’s stance on why he believes Nesmith should be strongly considered for a starting gig this season as he so gleefully pointed out in his takeaways from the game.
Should this type of play continue on throughout the preseason and through the regular season, even without a first five nod, the 21-year-old will undoubtedly be a key part of Boston’s rotation.