Robert Williams III is going to feel a lot of pressure to get back on the court for Game 4 against the Miami Heat. The Boston Celtics lost at home on Saturday and will have to go back to Miami with a deficit. In the third game of the series, Kyle Lowry played better than he did in the first two games of the series, even though he was dealing with a hamstring injury. In the first round of the playoffs, Jimmy Butler left Game 3 with inflammation in the same knee that kept him out of Game 5, but he returned the next game, which was the start of their second-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers. The healthiest team in the playoffs has been the Celtics, and they will either be up against a wounded Heat or against a player who is not. Either way, the Celtics would greatly benefit from their best rim protectors on the floor, but they need to exercise extreme caution with Williams for however long they remain in this postseason. It was assumed that Williams would be back at some point during the playoffs after he tore his left meniscus late in the season. Williams had a surgery to remove the damaged part of his knee, instead of stitching it up and dealing with a longer recovery. According to Ime Udoka, the decision for that particular surgery was made by the medical team of the Celtics, not Williams. The return time was 3-6 weeks. He came back to the floor 26 days after the injury. The same knee would be injured in a collision with Antetokounmpo in the third game of the series. He wouldn't be able to play the rest of the second round because of the bone bruise. Williams was not able to play in the Celtics' loss in the third game of the Eastern Conference finals. Williams was going to return if the Celtics didn't get swept by the Nets in the first round. The doctors chose to handle the injury in a way that was reasonable.
The Celtics brought Williams back too quickly in the playoffs, and they would go on to sweep the Nets and win the final three games fairly easily. He played 25 minutes in the playoffs after being out for four weeks. Then a couple of weeks later, the knee that was repaired takes a shot from the Milwaukee Bucks.
The play incensed Udoka, but Antetokounmpo did nothing different from the way he usually attacks the basket, and Williams wasn't set to take the charge. Williams was hit in the knee by Antetokounmpo. It was full leg to leg contact that could cause a bone bruise deep enough with swelling to keep Williams out of four games.
When Ja Morant suffered a deep bone bruise that kept him out for the final three games of the Memphis Grizzlies six-game loss to the Golden State Warriors, Jordan Poole rammed his knee into him. Not only that, but Poole grabbed Morant's knee less than a second after the initial impact, one of the many broken codes that plays in that series.
The contact with Williams' knee was not nearly as direct as the one with Antetokounmpo. The contact between Antetokounmpo and Williams resulted in an injury, which could suggest that the knee wasn't ready for NBA basketball. It's hard to believe that his knee healed in 26 days, when many NBA players have been out for longer than originally reported.
Lonzo Ball was supposed to return from his knee injury in six to eight weeks, but ended up missing the rest of the season. Zion was supposed to be ready for the first game of the season, but he wouldn't play because of a stress fracture in his foot. Draymond Green's calf injury would be later diagnosed as a back injury and he would end up missing 30 games as opposed to the initially optimistic at least two weeks.
The Celtics were willing to move faster with the recovery of their injured player than the other teams were. It is time for the Celtics to reverse course and keep Williams off the floor for the rest of the season.
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