Romeo Langford the point guard: a look at his debut running the show

The Boston Celtics were stuck. Kemba Walker and Marcus Smart both missed the loss against the Chicago Bulls with non-COVID illnesses. That left Boston with few choices to run the point.

Payton Pritchard did a decent job in his minutes, but he's small and that's costly defensively. Tremont Waters got a chance at the end, and that worked out well, but considering his recent role in the Celtics blowing a 27-point fourth-quarter lead in Los Angeles, it's not surprising Brad Stevens waited to use him. Jayson Tatum initiated a lot of the offense but keeping him on the ball so much eliminates some creative ways to get his offense going.

So, with all that in mind, and Tatum having to sit at some point, Stevens went to Romeo Langford as the primary ball-handler.

It wasn't an outrageous thought. Langford spent most of his pre-NBA career with the ball in his hands. Running the show isn't a foreign concept to him, though doing it against any NBA-level defense is a bit of an unfair ask.

But here he was, forced into an odd situation because that's what everyone has been asked to do in this 2020-21 NBA season. If you haven't been asked to do something uncomfortable on the basketball court, did you really play for an NBA team this season?

"We tried to play Romeo there a little bit," Stevens said after the game. "I don’t know if that’s in his wheelhouse yet, but he has to get to that point with his size and his ability to pass the ball."

So that means at some point, it's possible Langford will be asked to be one of the team's lead ball-handlers.

"We’re going to avoid it as much as we can right now obviously, because he’s not used to it, hasn’t played enough games to orchestrate and organize a group," Stevens said. "We will eventually go to Evan Turner mode, I guess."

The idea of it is tantalizing. That Langford, with his size and defensive promise, could run point guard in a long, switchable lineup is a Stevens dream scenario. Let's look at the first batch of film we have to see how Langford did.

First of all, let's preface this film session by saying the Langford, Luke Kornet, Jabari Parker, Grant Williams, Aaron Nesmith lineup on the floor is ridiculous. Stevens doesn't have much choice with the guys who are out, but it's hard to expect any one of these guys to have a ton of success. But maybe we can find signs of something good.

We won't find it on his first possession.



This is a designed alley-oop play for Jabari Parker, which the Bulls completely see coming. Nesmith makes a baseline cut to clear away any help from that side of the floor, but Thaddeus Young doesn't really need it. Parker takes a big, looping circuitous route that telegraphs the play. Langford is like a scared quarterback watching and waiting for his receiver to make his move and run his route.

He might as well have told Troy Brown, Jr. that he was going to try to throw the lob. To make matters worse, he tried to throw it from his hip. The way he was standing, and where he was standing, he was never a threat to do anything but pass. Even if the ball and somehow gotten through without being tipped, Young was in position to blow up the play on the back end.

His next opportunity highlights his strengths.



"That's good to see," Danny Ainge said during the broadcast. "That's what he's good at, taking it to the hole. But he can go left and right, and you  can see a little bit of bounce in his step maybe because he gets to play with the ball in his hands."

He's more of the slasher type. This is a simple read of an out-of-position defense and attacking it.

His next possession was an unremarkable pick-and-roll with Kornet where the Bulls played a drop coverage. His man followed him over the top of the screen, so Langford hit the popping Kornet, to swung it for a Nesmith 3-pointer (which missed). It's a simple read, and the right one. Nothing to get too worked up about, but hey, he did it right so that's good.

There were a couple of jumbled possessions where Langford wasn't running anything. There was a play where I think I know what they were trying to run but it was a convoluted mess and it had no impact on Langford's point guarding.

Here's another simple, right read that Langford makes.



It's nothing entirely special, but it's a foundational read. Denzel Valentine stepped over to stop the penetration. With Brown coming over the top, the quick pass to Parker is the right play at the right time. It's the simplest read a point guard can make, so if someone can't even make this play, then he's in trouble.

He made another simple, good read on a pick-and-roll with Parker on the next possession. He ran three pick-and-rolls and made the right read on each of them.

One thing pick-and-roll ball handlers need to learn is when to use the screen and when (and how) to reject one. Rejecting a screen is what it sounds like. A guy sets a screen for a teammate to go right, but instead the ball handler goes left.

It happens when the ball handler reads people overreacting to the screen. They start to move too soon, or too far, and the lane ends up opening up on the other side.

This is sort of what was going on here.


Langford sees the big lane to his left, so he goes for it, but he went for it too quickly. If he had properly made this move, it might have been a dunk for him.

He made the move on Tomas Satoransky before Kornet even really got into position. Langford never really sold that he was even considering using the pick. He never truly got Satoransky leaning off balance or leaning to his left at all, which would have made the crossover more effective and given him a lane to the basket. Because Langford was going too fast, Satoransky was actually able to keep up.

Now, he did recognize that and get the ball out to Kornet, but he missed a chance to set up his own offense and an easy two.

All in all, there were some positives and some negatives. He at least has some of the basic building blocks for running pick-and-rolls. With practice and time to hone those skills, he could easily develop into a guy who can competently run an offense.

"If a guy is gonna play around guys like Payton (Pritchard) and guys off the bench like Aaron, we need him to be a handler because he has shooting around him," Stevens said. "I think that’s a good spot for him as he continues to grow, but he’s not quite there yet. You won’t see it much in the last 14 games or beyond."

That's probably a good idea, but it might not be the worst thing in the world to sneak it into some garbage time here and there just to get him used to it some more. At the very least, if there is a summer league, he can get himself some good run as the point guard to get a better feel for the position and develop that skill.

It will be important that he does it while accentuating his own talents as a scorer because the team doesn't want to turn him into something he's not. What they're trying to do is build a bigger role for him, and there is at least something to build on.