Robert Williams Had Surgery Today And His Timetable To Return Is GREAT NEWS
Maddie Malhotra. Getty Images.
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(ESPN) - After undergoing surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee Wednesday morning, Boston Celtics center Robert Williams III is expected to return within four to six weeks -- a timetable that could land him back in the lineup as soon as the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, sources told ESPN.
Williams suffered the tear Sunday night, but the extent of the injury allowed for a procedure that won't require him to be sidelined for several months, sources said.
After the procedure on Wednesday, there was some initial optimism of a return on the shorter end of the timeline, sources told ESPN. The Eastern Conference semifinals are expected to start around May 1.
Huge news this morning and I mean HUGE NEWS regarding Rob's surgery and recovery. We all knew he was going under the knife, we just didn't know what type or surgery would he get. He could choose to have the meniscus trimmed, something that had a shorter recovery timeline but more long term risk, or he could have it repaired it which has a much longer recovery period and probably would have shut him down for good
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Two things with this. First, I hope Rob did not feel pressure to make any sort of rash decision with this. I hope he feels comfortable with this route and enough doctors took a look at everything and determined that this was a good path to take. At the end of the day that is what is truly most important. I personally didn't give a shit what Rob chose, I just want whatever is best for his long term knee health. If that was the short option, cool. If that was the long recovery option, cool. Am I now going to be terrified for the rest of Rob's career about this? Absolutely. But that's a future Greenie problem.
Second, from a basketball perspective, this is MASSIVE news. Game changing news. To go from a world where you may have had to go an entire playoff run without Rob to now potentially only the first round is a big time difference. Selfishly, when I saw that Wok tweet this morning I was over the moon. All I want is to see this Celts roster have a healthy playoff series. Before today I didn't know if that was even going to be possible. Now that might actually happen for multiple rounds if the Celts are fortunate enough to advance. With how depressing this all way for these last few days, I welcome this good news. It's changed everything about my spirit and overall well being.
I'll say this though, now there is even more pressure on the Celts to not lose early. You can't have Rob make this life decision in an effort to return to the lineup only for there to be no lineup to return to. That would be rather unfortunate. I don't care if it's the 4 week end or the 6 week end, I'm just happy it's not a season ending thing which it certainly could have been. Everyone could have been super cautious and just say you know what? See ya in October. Then again, maybe we should have seen this coming
Either way, as long as Rob is comfortable with the decision I can understand Brad taking on the future risk. Sometimes in life you have to gamble, and I know it's hard for us to do given their history with this stuff, but we have to trust the Celts medical staff/whatever doctors they went to in order to figure this all out. They've seen the knee, we've just seen tweets about this stuff on Twitter. If they all trust this is the right way to go, all we can do is be thankful for the recovery timeline and pray everything works out.
4-6 weeks, we can do that in our sleep. LFG.