Celtics first-round draft pick, Robert Williams, not penalized monetarily on rookie contract
Celtics exec Danny Ainge has obviously moved on, at least for now, on first-round draft pick Robert Williams' early mishaps.
Robert overslept on a conference call from the Celtics after being drafted 27th in the first round of the NBA draft, and then promptly (not promptly?) missed a flight that would have landed him at Boston's very first Summer League practice. These were obviously minor infractions but are negative signs for a young man that wants to be a star on a storied NBA franchise.
There is a bit of wiggle room on rookie contracts where a team can give their newly-acquired player anywhere from 80% to 120% of the rookie scale. At the #27 draft spot, the 2018-19 scale yields an an annual salary of roughly 1.4 million, meaning Boston could offer an amount between 1.1 million and 1.7 million.
Boston Celtics first round pick Robert Williams has signed his rookie scale contract. He signed for the standard 120% of the scale amount per sources.
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) July 5, 2018
As evidenced in the above tweet, the Celtics have opted to forgive past sins and offer the maximum amount of approximately 1.7 million. It should be noted, however, that offering the maximum is close to standard procedure in the NBA. However, it had been proposed that the Celtics may have chosen to send Williams a message in the form of a lesser offer. Instead, Danny Ainge has chosen to move on and hope for the best, namely that Robert gets his act together, shows up for scheduled activities and becomes even a slight replica of what Bill Russell, Dave Cowens and Robert Parish accomplished on the court.
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Photo via Nelson Chenault/USA TODAY Sports