Boston Celtics fans can already let out a big sigh of relief that Marcus Smart won't be donning a Log Angeles Lakers uniform this season. Instead he gets to join forces with Kevin Durant on the Houston Rockets. That's a relief in and of itself, but even better is that Smart called the Lakers out for how they handled his free agency.
In an exclusive interview with The Houston Chronicle's Varun Shankar, Smart revealed that the Lakers offer in free agency was "disrespectful."
“First off, I played so well that the offer that was ultimately given didn’t match the way that I played,” he said, “especially when you see guys who played way worse than I did, the offers they’re getting. And then it wasn’t any security that we wanted that they were willing to do.”
It may not count for much, but seeing Smart call the Lakers out for their lacking offer is somewhat cathartic. Espeically because Smart had a mini-renaissance season in LA. He didn't fully return to form after two injury-plagued seasons, but played well enough to show some semblance of the player Celtics fans grew to love.
That love has never been lost even three years later, and with Smart no longer a Laker and letting the world know his true feelings on them, it may even grow from here.
Lakers letting Smart go is pretty questionable
The Lakers bet that Smart was a low-risk, high-reward player, and he proved just that, even if he's not quite at the peak that he was in Boston. He still is a plus-defender and a solid complementary playmaker. Having that next to Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves could have been a big-time help, especially after they lost LeBron James and gave up the farm for Walker Kessler.
Doncic has his shortcomings defensively, so having players who could cover for him on that end would have been useful. Los Angeles did add Matisse Thybulle, but used the money they could have spent on Smart on Collin Sexton instead. Sexton is a good player - he came up as a free agency target for a good reason - but he overlaps Doncic and Reaves.
Wouldn't keeping Smart have made more sense?
Evidently, the Lakers didn't think so. They're entitled to handle themselves however they want, and not keeping Smart is music to Celtics' fans collective ears. It just seemed like a layup of a move to make with what's on the horizon for them.
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