Romeo Langford Went From A Figment Of Our Imagination To A Key Rotation Piece In A Blink Of An Eye
Boston Globe. Getty Images.Before you read everything in the blog, we can get this out of the way first. This is all in a very small 5 game sample since Romeo Langford returned to the lineup for the first time this season. I get it, you get it, everyone gets it. But considering Romeo is without a doubt the most mysterious player on this roster, it's interesting to see what the early trends look like with him back in the fold. They will change as he plays more minutes, nothing I am saying is set in stone, but there are a lot of reasons to be excited about not only what Romeo is currently doing to help this team, but what he might be able to do in the future.
Featured on Barstool
First, let's talk about the teams that make up Romeo's small sample: CHA/PHI/NYK/MIN/DEN. That's a decent group of teams, mostly all in the playoffs and two of the best teams in the league. The Celts are 4-1 since Romeo came back on 4/4. Those are just the facts. But when we talk about Romeo's impact, we should look deeper into what he's actually doing with his opportunities.
At least for me, when people would ask me what I expected from Romeo, I always tried to keep things on planet Earth. Just show me your defensive flashes we saw last year were real, and that he could come in immediately and be an NBA caliber defender. We all know the offense is a work in progress, but this team needs defensive help from Romeo more than they need his offense. Here's how that's looked so far
Team Defensive rating w/ Romeo on the court: 97.9
When you watch him play, you can clearly see his defensive impact
He's filling his role to perfection. Anything he gives you offensively is house money are far as I'm concerned. In an ideal world when Evan Fournier is back, the second unit doesn't need Romeo's offense. What they need is for him to show up on the other end. When we have instances where Romeo is playing with the starters, he doesn't need to shoot. He needs to help their perimeter defense.
If Romeo is going to be able to defend at this level, it gives Brad a ton of options in terms of lineup flexibility. He can throw out an all defensive lineup of Smart/Jaylen/Tatum/Romeo/Rob in matchups where maybe Kemba is getting hunted. With the way Grant has been defending recently, we've seen combos of Smart/Tatum/Romeo/Grant/Rob look very good. Again, this is all a small sample obviously, but I'm just looking for trends at this stage. Considering that end of the floor is the #1 issue this team needs to correct in order to turn their season around, having an NBA ready defender with good size like Romeo to throw out in various lineups is a big time boost. He's not some overwhelming savior or anything like that, but I think it's fair to say Romeo has answered the challenge of being a reliable defender for this team.
It goes without saying that he has blown by Aaron Nesmith in the quest to fill these wing minutes while Evan Fournier is out. As we know, if you can show Brad that you have the ability to defend on a consistent basis, you're going to play. It's pretty exciting that Romeo looks this good on that end all while still getting his legs under him while he recovers from covid. At some point, his minutes will start to increase (he's at 14.2 mpg) and that should only increase this team's ability to play some quality defense for longer stretches.
There were some out there that were quick to label Romeo a bust, and I never understood that take. We have no idea what Romeo is. He's barely played. We have no idea if his offense will ever come around. But what we do know is everything we saw in flashes last year on the defensive end has absolutely translated to Year 2. For a team that desperately needs help on that end, there's no denying how valuable that skillset is to this roster.
He's just 21 years old too by the way. Not even close to a finished product. Maybe Ainge was on to something after all? Time will tell.