What is this Grant Williams revisionism? He was fantastic defensively in last year's playoffs I thought, or at least legitimately good - which for a rookie is fantastic.
There might be a little recency bias swinging the other way on Grant now. Last year he flashed some above average switchable defensive ability, which is admittedly somewhat exciting for a non-lotto pick.
His offense was terrible last year, and has been terrible again this year. Combine that with the D regression and you get a very ugly end result.
I do think too much was made of his bubble play, how much playing time he got, how much Brad trusted him, etc. He was beating out a pretty motley crew, someone had to get the minutes.
The posters who thought the fact that he was getting consistent playing time meant he was on the rookie fast-track were overly optimistic. He wouldn't have gotten any playing time on most half decent teams last season. The Celtics depth absolutely cratered after the top 6 last year.
To get this back to Nesmith, if I had to rank the last 2 seasons first round picks by future optimism (not current on-court value), I would say.
Nesmith > Pritchard >>> Grant > Romeo