Celtics need Marcus Smart to be smarter

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/celtics/2016/01/bulpett_celtics_need_marcus_smart_to_be_smarter



Bulpett: Celtics need Marcus Smart to be smarter



Losing cool breeds losing games

By Steve Bulpett

Tuesday, January 12, 2016






Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens is seen in the first half of an NBA basketball game Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Brandon Dill)
Credit: AP


NEW YORK — The Celtics will try to do a better job of keeping their wits together tonight against the Knicks.

Poise — or the lack of it — is a warm topic around the club in the wake of three straight losses and five defeats in the past six games.

The C’s have lost leads of 13, 10 and 21 points against, respectively, Detroit, Chicago and Memphis, with things bubbling over in Sunday’s 101-98 implosion against the Grizzlies.

That one certainly was a team-wide matter, but Marcus Smart moved front and center when, with the Celts down a point, he felt he should have gotten a call on a drive and took out his frustration with a bad foul at the other end with 33 seconds left.

His teammates immediately were demonstrative in their dissatisfaction, with Smart and Jae Crowder getting into a loud disagreement. But it’s clear if you want the great things Smart can do, you’re going to have to deal with him living on the edge at times.

With 10:16 to go in the game, he nearly got into it with Vince Carter after the latter committed a foul.

“Hey, Marcus, let’s go,” coach Brad Stevens shouted. “The game’s more important than that.”

And Smart is too important to the Celtics to get caught up in macho matters too often.

The on-court intramural bickering is something that occurs more than is readily seen, and Isaiah Thomas was correct to point out, “It’s going to happen when you lose a 20-point lead. I don’t care what team you’re on or what level you’re playing at.”

But the Celtics don’t want Smart losing his head, regardless of his ultra-competitive level. He has to be a leader with a better grasp of the bigger picture if this team is to achieve its goals in the next few years.

“I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job so far,” Smart told the Herald. “It was just one of those days, one of those nights. Obviously you can’t have too many of those, but everybody’s human, so to say it’s not going to happen is a lie.

“It’s just one of those games. We all have them. I played horrible, so I’ve got to let it go. . . . But everybody’s important to this team. That’s why it’s called a team. It’s not just one person.”

Veteran Amir Johnson was asked about what he could say to get Smart to better channel his energy.

“I think it’s with everybody,” Johnson said. “We’ve all got to have poise. When the other team goes on a run, we definitely have to stay focused and stick to our game plan because everybody kind of plays hero ball. . . . We have to leave the refs alone. We can get to complaining about the refs and fouls, and it takes away from a lot of our stuff offensively and defensively.

“That’s kind of been the story. We beat up on teams, then they come back and we get rattled. We have to learn how to finish games.”

The loss in Memphis was particularly disconcerting because the Celtics had maybe their best ball movement of the season in the first half. There were extra passes and skipping decent shots for better ones. There was movement and cuts and slick, simple bounce passes for layups, which opened up even better looks from the outside.

And there were fast breaks. The Celts went for 14 transition points in the first quarter and just nine the rest of the game.

“I feel like the ball doesn’t move in the second half. It’s almost like everyone kind of plays hero basketball and we stop playing team basketball,” Avery Bradley said. “And that’s not how the Celtics play. We’ll get back to it. I’m not worried about it.”

Nor is Bradley overly concerned about family squabbles and shaky basketball that always seems to precede it.

“Everyone on our team is competitive,” he said. “Those things happen. We just need to stick together and just focus on the next game.”

The day before the Grizzlies game, Stevens talked about how his lads get out of their quick but patient game too easily.

“I think that when things get tough, we’ve tended to lean on that a little too much,” he said of ill-timed 3-pointers. “We’ve talked about home run-hitting instead of hitting singles. It’s less about the distance and the shot itself, but sometimes they’ve been hurried, so I think we need to just exhaust more options to attack the paint via the drive cut or roll or post.”

As the Celts enter Madison Square Garden, Stevens would like them to hold their attention longer as a way to break out of this pattern of inconsistency.

“I think the biggest thing is you focus on the task at hand, no matter what the circumstance is,” he said. “If things are going really well, you focus on the task at hand. If things are going really poorly, you focus on the task at hand.”

The task is, therefore, not so much to defeat the Knicks as it is for the Celtics to play more to their own capabilities and let the results take care of themselves.



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