Photo: By Erik Drost
Flower Mound native Marcus Smart, an 8-year Boston Celtics player, has led his team to the 2022 NBA Finals.
The Celtics will take on the Golden State Warriors in the best-of-seven series which begins Thursday, June 2. It’s the first time the Celtics have been in the Finals since 2010.
Smart, 28, who attended Flower Mound’s Marcus High School and Oklahoma State for college, was drafted in 2014. He has had his most successful season this year, recently being named the 2021-22 Kia NBA defensive Player of the Year.
Smart became the first guard to earn the honor since Gary Payton in the 1995-96 season. Smart is also the second player to win the award with the Celtics, joining Kevin Garnett (2007-08).
“I’ve been here in this city for eight years playing for Boston, and I’ve heard everything (about fans being impatient),” Smart said during Wednesday’s Finals media press conference. “We play for a city that’s very impatient. They have every right to be. The things that they have accomplished, you know, it’s kind of hard not to be impatient.
“We understood it. We get it. It just helps us strive to even go out there and please that impatience that they have. It’s fuel to our fire.” Smart also talked about his vocal leadership style and the respect he’s given by his teammates. He’s the longest tenured member on the Celtics’ team. On August 16, 2021, the Celtics re-signed Smart to a 4-year, $77 million contract extension shortly after new head coach Ime Udoka named him the team’s starting point guard.
“One, give respect. In order for you to get it, you have to give it. To receive respect, you’ve got to give it. I respect my teammates to my fullest with my play, my words, my actions, and they all know that everything I say and do is going to be honest and true and it’s real,” Smart said. “When you’re a real person like that, it’s kind of hard for people not to respect you and for people not to understand who you are and like you.
“So my teammates get it. They know that whatever it is, it doesn’t matter; if I’ve done something bad, wrong, they feel they can talk to me, and vice versa,” he continued. “If I’ve done something right, they are going to give me my roses and vice versa.”
Smart talked about the close bond he has with his teammates, even though they have had some struggles this season, which included him seeming to call out teammates Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum earlier in the season about their play on the court.
“When I told those guys I love them, I meant it. We’ve all been through some things individually, Al (Horford), Jaylen (Brown), a couple of those guys that have been here with me. My mom passed; they flew all the way to Dallas to the funeral,” Smart said. His mom passed of cancer in 2018.
“That was for real. It wasn’t no tactic. It was nothing. That was me being who I am, and that was true. We have a special bond outside of basketball, and you know, to be able to go to war with those guys makes that bond even stronger.
“Whatever I can do to help my teammates, I’m going to do it,” Smart said. “If that’s talking to them, sitting down; if that’s chewing them out or getting on them for something that they know we all know they should or shouldn’t do, and vice versa with me. I think that’s what makes our bond special.”
Udoka, who is in his first year as head coach, said of Smart: “Guys are who they are. Marcus is emotional as a player and the things he says and the way he plays and wears it on his sleeve. He may go about it a different way than others, but he is who he is. And we encourage guys to speak up.”
This season Smart was also named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team, receiving more first-place votes than any other NBA player.
