Breaking: Marcus Smart agrees to 4-year, $77 million extension with Boston Celtics

Marcus Smart has agreed to a four-year, $77 million extension to stay with the Boston Celtics through the 2025-26 season. The new deal is the maximum allowed for Smart based off his $14.3 million salary this upcoming season.

Smart is the longest-tenured member of the Boston Celtics and appears to be in line to be the team's starting point guard and key rotational piece for the foreseeable future. After news of the deal broke, Smart posted about it on Twitter and Instagram.

It appeared that Marcus Smart’s time in Boston had finally grown short. It had seemed like Boston was trying to create max cap space for the possibility of signing a third star. 

However, this extension basically eliminates that possibility. He, Jayson Tatum, and Jaylen Brown will combine to make $76.3 million next season. The salary cap line is projected to be at $119 million, which makes the max cap slot $41.6 million. Because collective bargaining agreement rules place “holds” for unfilled roster spots in the amount of rookie minimum salaries, There would be nine “holds” for $925,258 each, or $8.3 million total. 

So it is now impossible for Boston to jettison everyone and renounce everything they need to renounce to sign a third star at the 35% max (which would be Bradley Beal, who is a 10-year vet and thus eligible for the 35% of the cap). 

This means Brad Stevens is up to something else. Of course, this is not to say Smart’s contract fully guarantees him staying in Boston. The amount of money he’s being paid certainly is tradeable, but teams don’t typically give a guy a maximum extension just to have tradeable money around. If the Celtics are going to get that third star, they’ll have to find a way to trade for him. 

The hard cap line (or “apron”) for the 2022-23 season projects to be about $151 million. If Boston executes a sign-and-trade, they’d have about $33.1 million room before they hit that cap and four players signed. That money would go quickly and it would certainly cost Boston some useful players (a lot would depend on what they did with Robert Williams), but they could try to pull it off. 

This is more of a commitment to Smart. When Stevens first got the job, one of the first things I said was that he’d tell us what he thought of certain players with the moves that he made. 

With this, he backed up his words about Smart over the years, believing the intangibles outweighed the shot selection issues at the center of his detractors’ arguments. 

Stevens clearly believes in Smart as a leader and, as has been said many times, the heart and soul of the team. With Ime Udoka in charge and the team clearly skewing heavily to a defensive mindset, it certainly makes sense to keep the best defender on the team and an All-Defensive team candidate in the fold at fair market value. 

Again, Smart is likely the starting point guard, and this contract clearly means the team believes in him as such. This contract is starter-level money, and the team clearly believes he can thrive in this role. Udoka said at summer league that the plan was to “put the ball in Marcus's hands a lot more. He's kind of asked for that. And I think it'll be a great facilitator.”

It’s clear that Smart needs to cut out a certain amount of his 3-pointers, and putting the ball in his hands to start the offense could be a path to that because he’s going to have to give it up right away and then find a spot to get open. 

That means there should be a lot more catch-and-shoot opportunities for him in the corners, where he actually shot 48.7% last season. If he can shift his above the break 3-pointers, where he shot 30.7% last season, down into the corners, his shooting will be more palatable for everyone. 

Offensively, though, it’s his passing that Boston is depending on. He’s the team’s best passer, and he’s worked well with the team’s two stars, a primary driver on Stevens’ offseason moves. Of Smart’s 273 assists last season, more than half (149) went to Tatum and Brown. The Celtics are hoping to continue the trend with, they hope, a fully healthy, fully comfortable Smart who might finally enjoy a fully-defined role on this team. 

He’ll still be a jack of all trades for the Celtics. They will switch plenty defensively and he’ll rotate onto big men like he always has. He’ll also slide over to the 2 in certain lineups because no one in the NBA is just one thing anymore. 

But Boston has clearly committed to Smart as their point guard. Stevens has made a bet and it’s up to Smart to cash in on the faith Stevens has placed in him.