After almost ending his own season, Marcus Smart gets chance at redemption

WALTHAM -- Marcus Smart made his return to the practice floor on Wednesday evening for Boston’s first team workout since the All-Star break. The fact that he was back on the court so soon is a bit of a miracle, though, if you talk to his doctors.

The 23-year-old guard has missed the last month while his hand healed from lacerations (20 stitches in total) after he punched a glass frame in a Los Angeles hotel room. Several shards of glass were removed from his hand after the outburst and a couple of them came close to ending his season, according to the point guard.

“(The doctors) pulled a glass piece out of the palm of my hand about (signals a couple of inches),” Smart explained. “And they said the two tendons that ran along the pinky area, the main tendons, and literally the glass was sitting right in between them. So, like, you should go play the lotto or something because you missed your tendons. They don’t understand it. They don’t really see how. So I thank God for that every day. It could have been worse. I’m glad it’s not. ... I probably would have had to have surgery. I would have been done for the year.”

Brad Stevens knows what Smart did was a big mistake, but was relieved that an outburst didn’t cost a key rotation piece the rest of the year.

“You don’t want to put yourself in that risk, but luckily nothing beyond what happened, happened,” he said. “His hand is a lot better and that’s obviously encouraging. You don’t want anyone to pay any more than he did with regard to time missed, time away. He does want to play, he’s a guy who really likes to play, he’s a good teammate. I know how antsy he is, so that would have been even harder.”

Instead, the Celtics and Smart got somewhat of a reprieve. The fourth-year guard arrived back in Boston on Tuesday night and was cleared by team doctors for full participation in basketball activities moving forward.

“The first two weeks I really couldn’t use my hand at all, so I was doing all lower body,” Smart said of his recovery. “But I’m cleared to go fully, full contact. We had a good, full-contact practice today and the hand felt fine. So I’m excited. I’m excited to get back out there with this group of guys.

“No pain. I have no pain. So that was the big thing with today, making sure I could go through it and actually play through the contact. So that’s a good look for me.”

The timing of Smart’s return couldn’t have worked out better for a Celtics team that floundered into the All-Star break with a three-game losing streak, thanks to some serious issues on the defensive end.

“I told the guys like any time that you have come up short, you have to evaluate, you have to learn, then you have to apply it,” Stevens explained. “Our defense (was) not good the last five games, obviously. Whether that’s a small sample size or whatever the case may be, it just wasn’t good. I thought against the Clippers, especially, it was as bad as I’ve seen it. So that was a red flag, an alarm that we needed to talk about today and make sure that we understood.”

The Celtics weren’t just undermanned in the backcourt without Smart and Shane Larkin, they were missing two of their best perimeter defenders. That left the C’s exposed in matchups against smaller, faster lineups and was certainly a key factor as Boston saw some scary regression.

“I was devastated just from the fact that I couldn’t even get out there and do anything to help,” Smart admitted. “And the fact that we know what we’re supposed to do, we know how to play basketball, we did it 53 games straight... but I think there’s no excuses. Games we lost and things like that, those teams came ready. We didn’t. We’ve gotta finish the second half strong.”

Kyrie Irving knows how much of an impact that Smart’s presence should make on that front.

“He just adds a very unique understanding to the game on both ends of the floor,” Irving explained. “He’ll be able to break down the defense and create opportunities for not just himself but the rest of us. We all know how great he is defensively. What he adds to our team it great. It’s unmatched.”

The challenge now becomes just how exactly Stevens will be able to deploy Smart to maximize his value and the team’s lineups. The coach acknowledged changes are coming to the rotation and could include a shift to the starting five.

“Definitely rotate a little bit differently,” Stevens said. “I don’t know if that means changes in the starting lineup. We’ll definitely have some rotations that will. Certainly, it’ll be night to night, with tweaks from when guys enter the game, etc.”

While Smart won’t be able to solve all of Boston’s problems, the pressure is on him now to show his value, both for the Celtics and as a pending free agent. After turning down tens of millions of dollars before the year in extension talks, he has an opportunity to re-establish himself as part of the Celtics future. With no additions at the trade deadline (outside of a free-agent big in Greg Monroe), Smart (and Larkin) is pretty much all the Celtics have to fall back on this point, outside of rearranging some lineup parts.

If the 6-foot-4 guard plays to his strengths on both ends (that means more passing and less shooting on offense) he could be the piece that breaks the Celtics out of their latest funk. He’s still got the trust of Stevens as the longest-tenured Celtic on the roster and he knows the opportunity he’s going to be handed in the coming weeks.

“I’m a competitor and I think anybody in this league if you ask them they’ll tell you,” he continued, “it’s one thing to sit on the bench because for something that happened that you couldn’t control. But it’s another to sit on there for something you can’t control. I feel like I let my team down. But I got a second chance to come out and redeem myself.”