I'd feel better about Nesmith if he was 19, but he's 21 and you'd expect a bit more polish. But he's clearly putting pressure on himself to produce in the small amount of playing time he's getting so far and that's a common rookie issue. I would say that when healthy, Romeo has shown more upside, especially defensively.
FYI, here are the players taken after Nesmith but before Pritch:
15. Cole Anthony
16. Isaiah Stewart
17. Aleksej Pokusevski
18. Josh Green
19. Saddiq Bey
20. Precious Achiuwa
21. Tyrese Maxey
22. Zeke Nnaji
23. Leandro Bolmaro
24. RJ Hampton
25. Immanuel Quickley
Anthony, Maxey, Bey, Achiuwa and Quickley have shown flashes that make you think they could be better that Nesmith.
I’m not buying this. Pretty much all the guys you list have been bad, albeit in different ways. I’m not convinced any of them would be seeing real playing time on the Celtics. Nesmith has also flashed real NBA skills in his limited opportunities, but he’s clearly not an NBA player yet. To be clear, I am not saying Nesmith has been better than any of the players you name. He hasn’t. I’m saying the differences remain not meaningful, and the playing time difference also isn’t meaningful.
I think people are over-judging Nesmith because going into this season we thought there was a real opportunity for him to gain minutes due to a lack of wing depth and he hasn’t. But that overlooks three important considerations in his lack of playing time.
First, there hasn’t been the wing depth problem many of us anticipated. Semi, and to a lesser extent Javonte, have both made very real improvements this year that make the wing rotation much harder to crack than most of us anticipated and there have also been fewer wing minutes period as Brad has prioritized finding minutes for all 3 centers.
Second, there haven’t been any guard/small wing minutes available because Pritchard has taken them all for himself. This isn’t all that different from the first point, but it’s another way Nesmith’s anticipated open pathway to playing time hasn’t materialized.
Third, we all forgot that the first rule of Brad playing rookies is defense. Nesmith not playing is something we all should have expected because he was never going to be ready defensively, we knew that, but we overlooked it as we got excited about the Celtics top pick this year. As he adjusts and learns how to defend in the system, he will start to earn minutes, but that might be a slow process for him and we need to just be patient as it plays out.