NBA training camps open in the final week of September, and between now and then, we’ll be pondering 20 questions about the Boston Celtics as we head into the new season. Today we look at Marcus Smart, who is, for the first time ever, a full-time point guard.
___________________________________
Marcus Smart is about to get what he wants.
After seven years in the league as a combo guard, or “stretch 6” as he liked to call himself, Smart is about to walk into a season as the team’s full-time starting point guard.
“(He’s) a guy that hasn’t always been the starting point guard or a guy that hasn’t had the ball in his hands a ton,” new Celtics head coach Ime Udoka recently said, “He’s yearning for that.”
It’s a completely new situation for Smart, who spent more time at small forward than he did at point guard over the course of his first four seasons, according to Cleaning The Glass. It wasn’t until these past two seasons that his time as a point guard passed 20%, peaking this past season at 27% of the time he was on the floor.
The expectation is that those numbers flip this season, which makes Smart’s ability to actually pull this job off one of Boston’s biggest questions of this upcoming season. It might also be one of the most divisive.
There are people, like myself, who believe Smart can do this; that Smart has shown enough passing ability, court awareness, and basketball intelligence to instill confidence in Smart’s ability to pull this off.
There are others who see Smart as an excessively willing shooter who, with the ball in his hands more often, may be on the verge of some wild 3-point attempts.
We can argue about which of us will be correct all day long (and I suspect we might in the comments section), but as of right now, neither side is correct because we’ve never seen Smart in this position before.
We simply don’t know how it’s going to go.
By starting the season as the team’s point guard, Smart has to engage in a certain mentality. Point guards are the table-setters, and Smart knows well enough that Boston’s bread is buttered with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s skills on offense. The entirety of Boston’s offense is going to revolve around getting those two guys shots, and then adjusting from there.
That will involve different things at different times during the game, but the first thing it will involve is ball-movement. Udoka has been so set on getting the ball moving that he tweaked his new boss about it in his opening media availability. He also sent a thinly veiled warning to Smart, without mentioning Smart by name, in a recent radio interview.
"The league, in general, is a green light league and you have probably subpar shooters that are taking shots like they're 40-45 percent three-point shooters,” Udoka said. “We don't want to take away from their strengths, and their confidence. So we want to build on those things. But at the same time, you have to realize who you are playing with.”
It’s yet to be seen how closely Smart will pay attention to messages like that, but one factor in Boston’s favor is the new contract extension they handed out to their longest-tenured player. Any temptation Smart might have had to shoot instead of pass might be tempered by already having locked up his new contract. He has nothing to prove to anyone but his coach now that he’s under contract for the next five seasons.
Then again, he was just rewarded for playing how he’s played, and shooting the shots he’s shot, with $74 million. There is certainly an argument to be made that Smart has no reason to change how he’s played because it’s already gotten him this far. Why change now? They’re not going to take that money away.
I happen to think Smart, though liberal with his shot-taking, does try to be a good soldier on the floor. His answer to his new contract and new role is more likely to result in him trying to follow the coach’s directions rather than flout them. And by starting with the ball in his hands, that means the first thing he’ll have to do on most possessions is give the ball up, which could mean fewer shots -- or at least fewer of the shots that drive most Celtics fans crazy.
This doesn’t mean Smart won’t ever take a pull-up 3-pointer with 20 seconds on the shot clock again. That’s going to happen from time to time. We’re going to have to live with one or two of those on occasion. What we don’t want to have to live with is three or four in rapid succession.
Smart has launched from deep because, mostly, he’s been left open to do so. He’ll probably be left open just as much in this role, but the hope for the Celtics is that starting at the top of the key and then rotating to a corner will help lead to more shots from there -- as opposed to starting off the ball, rotating up, and shooting above the break.
He hit 48.7% of his corner 3-pointers last season and just 30.7% from above the break. Even if his attempts remain the same, an adjustment in where the shots come from could change the perception of Smart’s offensive capabilities.
But this is all theoretical at this point. Smart will give us the answers as the season progresses. If he truly is a good point guard whose shot selection improves, then Boston’s chances improve with them. Not only that, the Celtics will have locked down their point guard of the future, leaving Brad Stevens to focus on fixing other holes in the roster.
If he’s not, and he spends his time taking more ill-advised shots while being unable to create the ball movement Udoka wants, then the Celtic are in trouble, and will have a big decision to make moving forward.
Marcus Smart asked for this. It's up to him to deliver.
The 20 questions series: