Celtics Notebook: Robert Williams gets thrown into the fire, Peyton Manning pays a visit with Celtics

PHOENIX -- Before Brad Stevens was a Patriots and Red Sox fan, he was a Colts fan. His midwestern roots combined with a head job at Butler University made him a firsthand witness to watching the prime of Peyton Manning throughout his best years at the RCA Dome.

The Hall of Fame quarterback developed a friendship with the eventual Celtics head coach during those years and Manning was in town in Denver to spend some time with Stevens and his team ahead of Monday's matchup with the Nuggets.

"I've known him since I've been in Indy, he's been a good friend of mine," Stevens said. "It's pretty special to get the opportunity to know Peyton when I lived in Indy and now Brady in New England. It's about as good as it gets."

Manning was spotted taking photos with several members of the C's team on their social media channels as he sat with the group during some film work at the team hotel. 

"He was nice enough to come over and watch some film," Stevens said. "He's one of the better film watchers I've ever been around. He was probably on us (Monday) night for a couple of our miscues but it was great to have him around. We did some back and forth questions wise but we didn't want to put him on the spot. It was good to see him."

Irving relished the chance to gain some insight from one of the best quarterbacks of the past couple decades.

"It’s great, man," Irving said. "He’s a championship winner, an unbelievable preparer of the game. He was doing it for so long, thinking about the injuries he had to endure. It was great to see him just come and talk to your team, being in Denver and just having an echelon of greatness coming and talking, there’s nothing like it."

Robert Williams gets a taste of the big time

After watching the Denver Nuggets pile up their 12 offensive rebound of the game through three quarters on Monday night, Brad Stevens had seen enough of his usual bench unit. He elected to send in rookie center Robert Williams to try to stop the bleeding and foul Denver's weakest foul shooter (Mason Plumlee) to stop a one-sided scoring quarter.

The hacking decision paid dividends immediately after Plumlee missed both free throws and Williams provided an immediate boost on the offensive end with a monster putback dunk after a rebound in traffic.

"Honestly the rebound felt better than the dunk," Williams said of the play. "Just jumping to get the rebounds, I take pride in that. I felt like we were lacking rebounds that game so I wanted to put an emphasis on it. But like I said, just another confidence booster."

Those good vibes faded a little bit towards the end of the Williams stint as he appeared to intentionally foul Paul Millsap, a solid free throw shooter at 70 percent, almost out of nowhere during his final defensive possession of the night. The puzzling choice produced an entertaining explanation at Tuesday's practice: Williams thought he heard instructions from the bench to commit the deed.

"That was actually a miscommunication," Williams said. "I thought I heard 'foul him' but it was 'solid.' It was just so loud in the arena. But that's something I've gotta clean up on, like I said."

The No. 27 overall pick continues to see some spot minutes thanks to the absence of Daniel Theis (torn foot muscle) and that experience is leaving an imprint with the athletic 6-foot-9 big man as learns from his mistakes.

"It's a big confidence booster obviously," he said of the playing time. "It let me know what I need to improve on areas that I thought I was OK at. I messed up a couple defensive plays, offensive plays. But it gave me a chance to get my feet wet."

Rest day for some starters as work on offense continues

Jaylen Brown continues to battle through a sore foot this week, which led to the Celtics giving him a day off at practice on Tuesday. Al Horford and Gordon Hayward all got scheduled maintenance days ahead of a looming back-to-back on Thursday and Friday.

The expectation, for now, is that Hayward will play both ends of the back-to-back, including his return to Utah for the first time since signing with the Celtics last week.

In the meantime, the team is focusing on shoring up some offensive issues that have lingered after fast starts over the past couple of losses in Indiana and Denver. Boston remains 27th in offensive rating in the league 10 games in, despite having one of the most talented teams in the league on paper.

“There’s things we can do that will be better,” Stevens said. “Like better cutting, just a little bit more alert to being quicker with our drives, quick screens, making a point of getting the ball quickly to the ground and to the rim, and then making a read from there. We get there, then it’s about spraying it and making the right pass. We’re just not getting there quickly.

"Offensively, for whatever reason, we can have some of the most beautiful basketball played and then we can throw away a few possessions. That's got to change if we want to be good, especially against the schedule we are playing."

Kyrie Irving believes that the key lies in focusing on each possession individually, instead of trying to make up any deficit in big chunks with too much perimeter shooting.

"Obviously, when it’s a seven-point game or a five-point game or even a nine-point game, for us as a team, in a possession-to-possession game like that, we have so many plays we can go to and we don’t need to dominate that with the 3-point shot," Irving explained. "Easy two here, or getting the clock to stop and then having them run another possession, it could always equate to us getting back in the game. So I think down the stretch we shot a few too many (3-pointers) rather than taking the easy ones.”

The responsibility falls on the C's, who have the fifth-worst shooting percentage in the league, to be smarter with their shot selection, according to Irving.

"If we start getting into a battle back-and-forth going who can score more points and who can go up and down and do everything exciting and stuff like that, we have to be a disciplined team," Irving said. "We still have to learn how to get to that point. So the possessions where we come down and shoot with 17 on the clock, 18 on the clock,  depending on the player, depending on the role, depending on the situation of the game, it all has to be conscious of everyone on the floor including the coaches. It’s all a responsibility for us as individuals but us as a group to hold each other to a higher standard."