Marcus Smart Passes the Eye Test for Defensive Player of the Year Award

Forsberg: Smart passes the eye test for DPOY and more C's thoughts originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

It’s been a roller coaster week for Boston Celtics fans.

From the highs of Sunday’s dominant win over the Minnesota Timberwolves that briefly shuffled the team into the top spot of the East, to the lows of Robert Williams’ injury diagnosis.

News that Williams might be able to return for Round 2 of the postseason delivered renewed optimism on Wednesday but the Celtics stumbled at the finish line against the Miami Heat in a playoff-caliber battle exposing lingering concerns about the team’s crunch-time composure.

After spending a lot of time in the studio the past two seasons, we had an up-close view of the Celtics the past three games. Here’s a handful of thoughts collected along the way:

Smart's case for DPOY: The eye test

If every NBA award voter got to sit courtside for a couple of Celtics games, there would be little debate over Defensive Player of the Year. So much of what Smart does is not quantifiable in numbers.

Oh sure, there’s some hustle stats and defensive versatility metrics that can aid his case. But how do you quantify something like how often the opposing team’s best shooters don’t even attempt a shot because of Smart's hounding defense? Or how often Smart switches onto a big and either holds his own despite the height disadvantage or prevents that big from crashing the glass while a teammate secures a rebound.

Yet, at least once per game, there’s a sequence that nobody else in the league besides Smart seems to make. Like when Smart saw Raptors rookie Scottie Barnes being a little careless bring the ball up the court in the second half of Monday’s game in Toronto. Smart, lurking near the midcourt stripe, lunged with his patented cobra strike and Barnes fouled to prevent a breakaway layup. It didn't go in the stat sheet as a steal but Smart forced the turnover with pure grit and instinct.

Smart put on a defensive clinic for much of Wednesday’s game against the Heat highlighted by this sequence … 

… Smart swooped in like a cornerback baiting a quarterback while intercepting PJ Tucker’s backcourt offering. Smart then calmly delivered the behind-the-back feed to Jayson Tatum for a layup. 

We’d love to bombard you with all these advanced stats that hammer home Smart’s case the way we can with most DPOY-candidate centers. Among all players with at least 500 shots defended this season, Williams is holding opponents to a league-best 6.9 percent below expected field goal percentage. Smart is only at minus-0.5 percent but he’s out here chasing the opposing team’s top perimeter threat for most of the night.

So much comes down to the eye test with Smart. Even in the absence of that hard data, Smart has quietly become the betting favorite for Defensive Player of the Year. He understands the significance of potentially being the first guard in a quarter century to earn the honor.

“It just shows the work I put in on the defensive end. In this league, not a lot of guys take that end seriously,” said Smart. “But being able to lock somebody down and do what I’m doing … it’s different. To be able to, not only do that, but to be another guard to win it would be amazing.”

Crunch-time offense is a concern

Before Sunday’s win over the Timberwolves that pushed the Celtics to dangerously high levels of pundit optimism, we offered four lingering questions despite Boston’s torrid play. Our concerns about health, crunch-time offense, and Derrick White’s 3-point shot immediately reared their ugly heads.

It is Boston’s late-game offensive woes that remain most concerning from this vantage point. Forget the Toronto loss, because of the personnel the Celtics had (though, it sure felt like the Celtics should have closed that out in regulation). Boston’s scoring drought late against Miami is worrisome, especially when teams are clearly set to load up on Jayson Tatum and force everyone else to beat them.

The Celtics are now 5-5 in clutch games since their improbable surge started on January 7. Their offensive rating of 91.3 ranks 28th in the NBA in that span. A minus-16.3 net rating sits 27th. Boston’s effective field goal percentage plummets to a league-worst 35.4 in that 50-minute sample.

Boston had multiple shots around the basket that felt like they could have dropped late against Miami. But they didn’t. The Celtics made only one of their final nine shots. Jaylen Brown and Smart each had driving layups rim out, Tatum got whistled for a charge, and White missed a wide open 3 in Boston’s last-gasp attempt to rally.

Said Udoka. “Good experience for us going forward, knowing not every game is going to be as easy as they’ve been lately.”

The Celtics have dominated teams so thoroughly lately that they needed a reminder of how playoff basketball is going to feel. They’ve simply got to be crisper in those moments. We can yearn for Tatum to do more -- and surely a top-5 MVP candidate has to be capable of stopping the bleeding when Boston’s offense goes particularly cold. But the supporting cast needs to make teams pay for the attention on Tatum, too. 

No Time(Lord) to waste

The alley-oop finishes and volleyball-spike blocks fill up his highlight reel and the Celtics will surely miss the freak athleticism that Williams brings to the court. But one of the things that was evident Sunday, and then missing the rest of the week, was how quickly Williams can turn a simple rebound into a transition opportunity.

Celtics coach details Robert Williams' surgery decision, rehab plan

Williams doesn’t like having the ball in his hands long. Forget the 0.5 offense, Williams operates like he’s playing in a 0.1 offense. Williams plays basketball like a perpetual game of hot potato. Sometimes that leads to some hilariously quick passes on the offensive end that catch teammates by surprise. But his unquenchable desire to move the ball helps the Celtics team that is otherwise poor at making the most of live ball rebounds.

The Celtics rank 10th in the NBA in halfcourt offense this season but 30th in points added off live ball rebounds, per Cleaning the Glass data. It gets a whole lot tougher to score in the halfcourt in the postseason and Boston has to make strides at scoring off stops, especially considering their defensive dominance.

Emptying the notebook

• We’re not going to quibble with an eight-man rotation in a playoff-intensity game but we do hope that Aaron Nesmith gets a chance to build off the positive impact he had in Toronto. Nesmith was Boston’s best defender on Pascal Siakam (only 6 points allowed in nearly 5 minutes of matchup time) and his energy remains infectious. Nesmith brings a little bit of that Williams-like, wound-tight energy to the court and it makes up for some of his mistakes.
• Sam Hauser doesn’t shoot the ball so much as send it into a gentle planetary orbit that sees the ball return to Earth’s atmosphere with the singular goal of touching as little twine as possible. Some swishes just sound different.
• Grant Williams has a big and loud personality that has helped endear him to his teammates. But it’s not endearing him to officials. Williams’ ascension has been a great storyline for the Celtics this year but he’s not at the point yet where he can bark at (and/or stare a hole through) officials the way he does lately when calls don’t go his way. This isn’t just a Grant problem. Udoka has repeatedly had to remind all of his players to let him do the complaining. The Celtics have to be better at moving on from calls that don’t go their way.
• It was neat to see how excited deep depth guys like Matt Ryan were to simply suit up for Monday’s game in Toronto. For all the unnecessary Falcons references his name triggers, it was kinda funny that his first opportunity to play came on 3/28.
• File this under the little things don’t go unnoticed: A dad and his young daughter were sitting courtside near the Celtics bench on Monday night. The little girl was a bundle of energy who routinely stole dad’s phone and recorded highlights. She squealed with delight at all of Siakam’s buckets while wearing his No. 43 jersey. As the Celtics took the floor to warm up before the second half, dad called out to Smart to inquire about a picture. Smart made sure to pop over before the start of the third quarter and surely made a new fan in the process.