Marcus Smart’s ‘tremendously important’ return on his late mother’s birthday: ‘Today was a special day’

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2019/12/boston-celtics-marcus-smarts-tremendously-important-return-on-his-late-mothers-birthday-today-was-a-special-day.html



Boston Celtics’ Marcus Smart’s ‘tremendously important’ return on his late mother’s birthday: ‘Today was a special day’



Posted Dec 07, 2019




Denver Nuggets guard Gary Harris (14) loses control of the ball as Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart (36) defends in the second half of an NBA basketball game, Friday, Dec. 6, 2019, in Boston. The Celtics won 108-95. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)



By John Karalis | JKaralis@masslive.com




BOSTON - “It was meant to be.”

Somehow, Marcus Smart was always going to play in this game. Sick or hurt, Smart wasn’t going miss this game. Not on this day. It was too important.

“Tremendously important,” he said. “Today was a special day, my mother’s birthday.”

Camellia Smart would have been 65 today. She lost a battle with cancer more than a year ago, robbing Smart of the most important person in his life.


We like to joke about Smart needing to be saved from himself sometimes; that someone needs to intervene before Smart’s hard-headedness about playing through a mountain on injuries gets him into trouble. In reality, his drive to power through the nagging aches and pains is, in Smart’s own way, a sort of tribute.

“Just to keep going. One thing my mom told me when she was battling with the cancer was if you give up and stop fighting, I’ll stop fighting," Smart said. "So for me it really set home for me, just continue to keep fighting because she was cut short and she can’t fight no more. She fought with everything that she could and was taken away from us. The legacy drops down to me and I’ve got to continue to keep fighting.”

And fight he does. The oblique? No problem. Mangled fingers? Who cares. His list of injuries is so long that describing how each one feels can take a full five-minute media availability.

Smart was still feeling the effects of whatever it was that caused him to wake up in a cold sweat two nights ago. He wore extra padding to protect that sore oblique.


He still dove. He still sacrificed his body. He still fought with another giant center, Denver’s Nikola Jokic, in the post. He didn’t put up a lot of box score numbers, but he was still one of the most positively impactful players on the floor. He let others handling most of the scoring, but it was his 3-pointer that lit the fuse on a monster end-of-third quarter run that put the game away.

No one would have batted an eye if he took this game off, but that was never going to happen.

In a more fair world, one of the nearly 19,000 posters in the TD Garden bearing Smart’s likeness would have been a special birthday souvenir for his adoring mother. Life isn’t always fair, though, but Smart was always going to do what his mother told him to and just keep going.

And maybe, somehow, she had a little hand in making that happen.

“It was just one of those nights that it’s no coincidence I come back from my injury today,” Smart said. "Like I said before, it’s kind of one of those things you say it was meant to be.”


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