Marcus Smart thinks Celtics have moved past turmoil after slow start: ‘We’re on the right path’

Boston Celtics' Marcus Smart celebrates his three-pointer during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Chicago Bulls, Monday, Nov. 1, 2021, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
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BOSTON — Amid the Celtics’ uneven start to the regular season, no one was in a bigger offensive rut than Marcus Smart heading into Friday night’s showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers. The point guard’s already subpar career shooting averages had taken an even bigger nose dive over the first 15 games of the season, helping lead Boston’s offense on a path towards the bottom 25 percent of the league in scoring efficiency.

Smart has never been known for his shooting prowess but as he handled the heaviest minutes load of his career, his offensive slump was a drag on the team’s record. Yet, just like with the team’s record in recent weeks, there have been signs of progress with the point guard, particularly since his critical comments about teammates Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Since then, Smart’s assists have been up (team-high six per game) and turnovers have gone done. His 3-point shooting has still been far below average however so against the Lakers on Friday night, he decided to take a different track: Attack a defense with a weak interior presence.

With Jayson Tatum and Dennis Schroder sidelined with early foul trouble, Boston’s offense needed a spark to keep pace with the Lakers’ 38 point first quarter. Smart answered the bell on that front, scoring 10 of his season-high 22 points in the first quarter, which set the tone for Boston’s superb offensive outing in a 130-108 win at TD Garden.

Perhaps the most eye-opening part of Smart’s scoring line came from the type of shots the point guard attempted. 11 of his 13 shots came from inside the arc, setting the stage for a dominant effort by Boston by getting to the free throw line (38 attempts) and attacking the paint (56-36 edge over the Lakers)

“It showed in the numbers,” Ime Udoka said of Smart’s aggression. “38 free throws for us is obviously being very aggressive. He put his head down, especially when Davis and some of those guys went out, he really attacked their bigs when they were back a little further and he got some of their guards on his hip. He was extra aggressive and we needed it at the time.”

Smart’s mentality fueled a team-wide aggressive mindset that helped the hosts turn a 14-point first quarter deficit into a blowout win in the fourth quarter. Boston shot a pedestrian 36 percent from beyond the arc and instead relied on their slashing to create easy looks from inside the arc for the entire roster, knocking down 56.5 percent of their shots from two-point range.

“My mindset was I didn’t want us to go into our old habits of just settling, trying to get it back in one possession,” Smart said after the win. “Just trying to attack the rim, find the right plays for myself and for other guys. That’s what we’ve been missing a lot over the years is when we get down like that against a good team, we tend to relax and kind of go the easy route of trying to shoot our way out of it.”

“It opens the game up,” Jayson Tatum said of Boston’s backcourt attacking. “Those guys are so crafty and shifty getting down hill, finishing at the rim, and finding guys on kickouts, it opens things up because it’s hard to stay in front of those guys with how quick they are.”

The offensive breakthrough couldn’t come at a better time for Boston amid a frustrating start to the season. While the defense has stabilized, the offense hadn’t turned a corner at all really until Friday night when the team played 48 minutes of selfless basketball that produced 130 points. That and some shooting luck was due according to Udoka.

“We looked at our numbers over the last eight games before tonight,” the head coach said. “We were 5-3 before tonight, but lost a 19-point lead and didn’t play full games against Dallas and the Atlanta game. So we felt we could be in better shape record-wise, but we liked the way we were trending. Second in the league defensively over those eight games.

“Offensively, we’re 23rd overall, but it was due to a lot of poor shooting. Being in those games with the way we were bot scoring offensively, we knew we could rely on the defense. We knew where we had been, number one in transition, number one in guarding the 3-pointer over those games and we wanted to carry that into tonight. And after the first quarter, I felt like we did that.”

With the returns of Jaylen Brown and Robert Williams looming in the coming days, the Celtics have an opportunity to turn the corner here with a home-heavy schedule looming in the next few weeks. There has been plenty of turmoil on and off the court with this group but the ship is starting to steady as supporting pieces like Smart begin to play their role better and regress to the mean as shooters.

“New coach, relatively new team, new roles, trying to get that chemistry together on both ends,” Smart said of the team’s .500 start. “Within the players, the coaches, the coaches within themselves, the players within themselves, we’re human. Things aren’t going to go as perfectly as we planned.

“But it’s what you do when things go that way that you don’t think they should go. Not how you react to it and I think we’ve been reacting really well. I think we had some turmoil early on, that’s part of it, just trying to figure out a way to get each other going. And we’re doing it, it’s coming along. Obviously, we still have a lot of work to do, but we’re on the right path.”

With a pair of winnable games coming up (Oklahoma City, Houston) before a showdown with the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night at the Garden, the path is in place for a rise towards the top half of a wide-open Eastern Conference. Consistency will be the challenge now to maintain the aggressive mentality that Smart and others carried offensively beyond just the Lakers game but the team’s response to adversity looks encouraging after a 2-5 start.

“It just shows that we’re not perfect, but the fight is in us,” Smart said of Friday’s comeback. “It might not look like it right now, but we’re going to turn things around.”

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