• The knee injury suffered by Robert Williams near the end of the 2021-22 season remains an issue for the Celtics big man, who will undergo arthroscopic surgery on that troublesome left knee.

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Gore Links), the procedure is expected to require a recovery period of four to six weeks. Williams will miss training camp and preseason, but the hope is that he will return to the lineup early in the regular season, Woj says, adding that the plan is for him to have surgery later this week (twitter link).

Williams initially underwent knee surgery in March after tearing his meniscus. He was able to return to the court less than a month later and participated in the Celtics’ run to the NBA Finals, although he was not 100% in the postseason. The 24-year-old missed five games in the second and third rounds of the playoffs and reportedly required extensive treatment as he dealt with fluid buildup.

Williams enjoyed a breakout season in 2021-22, setting new career highs in PPG (10.0), RPG (9.6), BPG (2.2), games played and started (61), field goal percentage (73.6%) and various other categories. . He also helped anchor the best defense in the NBA.

As Deveney writes, the hope was that Williams would be ready to play this fall after resting his knee during the offseason, but it looks like that won’t be the case. The procedure will leave the Celtics, who are already without Danilo Gallinari due to a torn ACL, with few players up front to open the season.

Al Horford, Grant Williams, Luke Kornet, camp guest Noah Vonleh and two-way player Mfiondu Kabengele are among Boston’s best available big men heading to training camp. As ESPN’s Bobby Marks observes (via Twitter), we’ll likely see Jayson Tatum play a lot of minutes at power forward early on to help fill in the gaps on the depth chart.

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