Former late first-rounder now deemed ‘best-kept secret’ on Boston Celtics

When it comes to the Boston Celtics, everyone familiar with the team knows just how great their talent pool is.

With star headliners such as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to their recently acquired top-notch role players in Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari, the shamrocks are blasting towards the 2022-23 campaign in the driver’s seat to take home the Larry O’Brien Trophy and a major reason why is due to their immaculate rotation.

However, even with all the known commodities on board, there is still some mystery to this Boston ball club that consists of quite a number of unknowns, and, according to the folks at Bleacher Report, they believe that one of their biggest enigmas comes in the form of power forward, Grant Williams.

Citing his incredibly efficient defensive play despite his undersize 6-5 build, coupled with his savvy shooting stroke, writer Zach Buckley believes that the 22nd pick from the 2019 draft is the “best-kept secret” the Boston Celtics possess:

"You could argue that last season spilled the beans on Grant Williams being Boston’s best-kept secret. He essentially engineered across-the-board improvement, leading to substantial spikes in floor time (24.4 minutes per game) and perimeter shooting (106 triples on 41.1 percent shooting).On a team littered with do-it-all stoppers, Williams graded the highest in BBall-Index.com’s defensive versatility. His three-ball and improved mobility gave him extra juice away from the basket, but he can still muscle up in the frontcourt to bang with bigs. He has played everywhere but point guard during his first three seasons with the Shamrocks.Still, it feels like he has another level to reach, one higher than most fans might think. He’s still working on consistency—he had a rough go in the Finals—and hasn’t dabbled much with shot creation. If he fine-tunes his established strengths and develops more, look out."

Throughout his three-year career, Grant Williams has managed to up his on-court production with every passing season and, in 2021-22, he went on to establish himself as a staple within head coach Ime Udoka’s newly established scheme.

Seeing career highs all across the board, the 23-year-old posted impressive averages of 7.8 points, 3.6 rebounds, and just shy of a block per game whilst serving as one of the team’s most trusty long-range snipers, converting on a second-best 41 percent of his 3-point attempts on the year (of those who played in 50 or more games) for the Boston Celtics.

Now heading into year four, perhaps there’s another level to his game that could be found and, should this happen, Buckley believes that something of a breakout could be in store for the quasi-big man.