There will be two kinds of reactions to seeing this headline.
One will be an excited “oh here we go!”
The other will be an aggravated, breathless, “oh here we go.”
And such is the Marcus Smart experience. There is no longer any middle ground on Smart. Those who love him still “love and trust” him. Those who don’t, really don’t. And because social media and internet anonymity have warped reality, it’s hard to tell how many people have chosen which side.
I can tell you this, though. His teammates are pretty sure what side they’re on.
“Marcus Smart was terrific by the way, especially at the end of the game,” Jaylen Brown said, taking a detour from another answer to shout Smart out. “He may not get credit for having a great game, but defensively he won that game for us.”
Oh here we go.
You don’t have to bother rushing to the comments just yet. I know the stats. He’s shooting 27.5% to start the season, 24.1% on 3-pointers. Despite this, he’s taking 7.3 3-pointers per game over his first four outings, only two fewer than Brown. Those percentages were better before the Hornets game.
‘I mean, who does he think he is? Steph Curry?’
“He’s 3-12 on the night, 1-9 from three ... but he impacts the game in other ways,” Ime Udoka said, using the argument that really drives some people nuts. “I said it to the group in there, I said I don’t care about the 41 and the 30 from you guys, Marcus had the play of the game taking that last shot away from them. He does all the little things, switching onto LaMelo and guarding some of those guys well. He does so much that doesn’t show up in the box score, but we know the toughness and heart and soul of our team comes from him.”
And this from the guy that suspended Smart a couple of weeks ago.
Smart, basically, is human cilantro. Some people will get tacos topped with cilantro and love it. Other people think it tastes like soap. And no matter what any of us do or say, no matter how many different teammates, coaches, executives, or opponents say about Smart, there will be no convincing some people that Smart’s game doesn’t taste like soap.
Me? I love cilantro.
And this is where the battle lines really get drawn, because liking Smart’s game has become a bit of a litmus test, which pisses a lot of people off.
Liking Smart’s game borders on arrogance. The “it doesn’t show up in the box score” argument comes off as insulting to people who will look at a game and the box score and wonder how the hell a 1-9 night can be celebrated.
How are the Celtics coached by a guy gushing about Smart? And why is Boston Sports Journal paying money to this idiot who keeps cramming positive Smart takes down our throats?
Smart is visceral. I’m pretty far removed from my playing days (my knees confirm this on a regular basis), but watching Smart’s finish to this game makes me want to pick him for whatever team I’m putting together. I see the same shots he takes, but I also see him scramming Dennis Schröder out of mismatches before they can be picked on. I hear him saying things on the floor that become plays other guys make. And then, somehow, when the game is on the line, a shot falls.
He sent the Knicks game into overtime. He hit a 3 to cut the lead to 5 in the fourth quarter. He also ripped Gordon Hayward clean, picked up a loose ball and quickly fed Brown for a dunk before Charlotte’s defense could react, and then he picked off an inbounds pass to seal the trip to overtime. And he did it on a day he probably shouldn’t have played.
"Literally. This morning I woke up and I threw up and everything. It was killing me so bad,” Smart said of migraines that have bothered him for days. “Body just weak ... They wanted to put me as questionable. I told them let me see how I feel. I started to feel OK, headache went away. But my vision was a little blurry. My whole head was really still spinning. Stomach still upset. Then literally right before the game, I told them, I said, at the moment, just be ready if I can't go.”
Time will tell how well Smart will work in this new role. I’m not going to sit here and say it’s going great right now for him. I’m not that stupid.
I thought Smart as the point guard would look different and the reality is that Smart’s role has barely changed. I expected him to be used a certain way and, at least for now, that’s not how it’s gone.
And that means that Smart’s game is largely unchanged at the moment. There are a few more corner 3-pointers but not enough to suggest a true shift. He’s passing the ball more, but there’s no guarantee he’ll even lead the team in assists at this rate. The Celtics have had so many guys in and out of the lineup so far that it’s hard to tell exactly what they’ll ask of Smart on a nightly basis.
But one thing is for sure. Smart will still be Smart, for better or for worse. Just don’t try to convince his teammates of the “worse” part.
“Smart is a dog,” Robert Williams said. “He has all those tendencies and he's very much appreciated on this end. Always, we need him for sure. It's just a sense of reliability. We know we got his back and vice versa.”