With Smart playing his best defense, sky is the limit for Boston Celtics

With Marcus Smart playing his best defense, the sky is the limit for the Boston Celtics in the Lake Buena Vista bubble.

41 days ago we finally got Boston Celtics NBA basketball back after a four-month-long hiatus due to circumstances nobody could have foreseen. The Coronavirus pandemic has swept across the world leaving chaos and tragedy in its wake.

Hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and beyond have been affected in one way or another. For some, lives have changed forever coinciding with the loss of loved ones or dealing with the horrendous economic reality of pay cuts and job losses. For others, the global lockdown has been a time of reflection and solace which has provided important time to be spent with family and friends that in reality may not always have been possible.

Whatever your situation over these last six months, it has become clear now more than ever that there is one thing we depend on. One thing that unites and binds us all: the need for escapism. To many people, including myself, we find that form of escapism through basketball. The one thing we desperately wanted back in our lives was basketball. And it delivered in all its glory.

The bubble has was formed. The schedule released. The teams arrived. The NBA’s long-awaited return was back and the countdown to crowning a champion is well and truly on.

This isn’t a regular season. It was never going to be the same, plain and simple. Whether you believe there should be an asterisk or not attached to the champions come October is in truth completely irrelevant. We have never seen anything like this before. But isn’t that the excitement of it all?

There was one burning question undoubtedly on the mind of every coach, player, and fan of the 22 teams who entered the Orlando bubble – How far can we go?

For Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics this question was no different, but in the shape of Marcus Smart, they may just have a player who can make it that bit special.

Everybody is aware of the supreme offensive talent on this Celtics roster. It is there in abundance. Jayson Tatum has been the star of the show all season for the C’s averaging 24.4 PPG. The future MVP candidate has been remarkable inside the bubble and has been supported by an array of talent.

All-Star Kemba Walker, who lest we forget has the ability to change a game in the blink of an eye, came back relatively fresh from his knee troubles and has shown his best self during the opening rounds of the play-offs lighting it up from the 3-point line. ,

Jaylen Brown has developed into a high IQ player whose ceiling is still largely undiscovered and he has arguably been the best player since the Boston Celtics returned to action. Gordon Hayward still has to come back into the squad having missed an abundance of games due to injury and also the birth of his child. Hayward is an all-rounder who can get hot and dominate the floor when you least expect it putting up over 17 a night for someone who has almost been forgotten about.

The makings of a championship-level team are there and we haven’t even mentioned the glue that holds it all together: Marcus Smart.

If the Boston Celtics are to try and make it an eighteenth NBA Championship and go deep into the latter stages of this season’s competition then–without a shadow of a doubt–they are going to need at his best level on defense.

Smart has been impeccable this season and is a massive contributing factor in the Cs holding the third-best defensive record in the league behind Milwaukee and Toronto. Despite going unnoticed at times, there was a real case for smart being included in the all-defensive 1st team again this season. His cleverness and fearlessness in defending are truly remarkable and I can’t quite ever remember a point guard being so ferocious in defending the rim while putting his body on the line for the cause.

Smart’s ability to fly around the court with what seems like no consideration for his own health is a sight to behold and it is as clear as day to me that he is the lynchpin in a defense that has three players in the top 20 defenders in the league.

On a nightly basis he shows off his anticipation skills with his reading of the game and if you were to ask me who I want at the end of a game 7 in an isolation situation, Smart and Kawhi Leonard are my only picks to make that play to win me the game.

He can be summed up in one word: game-winner. And we have evidence for this: his most remembered defensive play was that crucial interception at crunch time vs the 76ers in the opening round of the playoffs and he’s been crucial in the series against the Raptors both on and off the D.

If we can forget his scintillating 4th period in Game 2 for just one moment where he had five 3-pointers to win the game and cast our mind back to life pre-bubble for the time being, we can see that the proof on defense was there.

Overtime putback in Toronto, late-game charges taken vs Harden to earn him his fourth Tommy award, and although losing the game in the end, the last chance strip of Kawai Leonard in LA epitomizes everything about this defensive monster. These are memorable moments and game-winning plays.

Smart plays with a pit-bull like disposition at times in his defending and for my money is probably the most physically opposing PG in the league. You don’t get an easy night off Smart. Simple as that. This is exactly the type of player you want in a championship level locker room and he lives and breathes a winning mentality. Surround this with top-level scoring forwards and shooters and you have a recipe for success.

Smart ranked 18th overall in defense this season prior to the play-offs with a rating of 104.3 but numbers can sometimes be deceiving. Anyone who watches this Boston Celtics team regularly knows how pivotal his style of game in contributing to a winning team and when you add this into the overall collective of a strong Boston defense in transition then it becomes a nightmare to match up with for almost anyone across the league.

It remains to be seen whether the Celtics can go all the way to an NBA finals run, we will know more in a matter of months, but with Marcus Smart playing his best defense the sky could quite possibly be the limit.