For the first time in years, Romeo Langford is spending time rehabbing his jump shot rather than himself, which is a bit of a relief.
“It's more just knowing that I have all this time to focus on basketball,” he said after the team’s Wednesday summer league practice. “I can put all my focus in things on the court instead of focusing on rehabbing my hand or knee or whatever the case may be.”
This is the most important summer of Langford’s young NBA career. With Celtics observers picking sides over whether he does or does not have the potential to make an impact, and with Langford’s time in Boston potentially hanging in the balance, he’s finally able to focus on the things that will make all those determinations.
“Yeah it’s my first, real, full summer where I’ve just been able to work out and just work on the things that I need to work on without worrying about anything,” he said. “I feel like I’m progressing really well. I feel like I'm making big strides in all the aspects that the team and myself wants to work on.”
What makes Langford so interesting is that he came into the league with a reputation as a scorer. The thumb injury that caused him issues at Indiana dropped his draft stock, and Danny Ainge bit at the potential for a big hit on an injured talent.
However, Langford immediately showed a tantalizing defensive ability while the rest of his body was figuring out how to get his offensive game to travel from Indiana to Boston. This summer presents Langford his first opportunity to stitch it all together.
“I feel like I really haven’t shown just about anything that I’m really capable of doing,” he said “I felt like coming into the NBA I really wasn’t known as a defender, but I felt like I’ve shown that I’m capable of playing defense and playing it pretty good. So that’s just an add-on of what I’m capable of doing.”
Capable of doing and actually doing are two very different things. Circumstances have thrown roadblocks in Langford’s way, but that doesn’t mean it’s time for him to feel sorry for himself. Life throws those in front of all of us. The key is whether you are able to navigate around them or whether they turn into stop sticks.
“With any player, not just Romeo, what you have to teach them first is how to take ownership of their career,” said Celtics assistant and summer league head coach Joe Mazzulla. “Can they make an investment in the weight room, can they make an investment in their nutrition and, you know, the mental side of the game. Can they make an investment in their habits? One thing we try to work on with our young guys is to teach them how to take ownership. All four of them have taken ownership of their careers. Romeo has done a good job of that as well."
The opportunity is finally there for Langford. He and teammate Aaron Nesmith are in the same boat at the moment; young wings with untapped potential, a ton of promise, and a near guarantee of playing time on a team forced to re-tool in the middle of its championship aspirations.
This becoming a bridge year has already relieved plenty of hair follicles of their duties around town, but there is always opportunity in the midst of a downturn. When the housing market turned, people who still had money were able to swoop in and grab cheap property. When the Celtics fortunes turned, it’s Langford and Nesmith who are now in a position to grab available minutes that might have gone to bigger names on the free agent market.
“We’ve really just been going at it this whole summer just working on the things that I will see at summer league and knowing that I will be playing a bigger role than I normally do,” Langford said. “Me and Aaron, we’re just using this summer league and using this summer just to work on getting more reps and be prepared for whatever role they ask us to do, just knowing that it might, most likely, be a bigger role than we played in the previous season.”