marcus-smart Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Boston can sure take a punch
We’d seen this script before. Fans with any kind of decent memory recognized it. In the NBA Finals, as Golden State locked in and took a double-digit knockout lead. Turn off your TVs, the game is over. Or as the late-great Chick Hearn would say “The game’s in the refrigerator, the door’s closed, the...
2022 NBA Finals: How the teams stack up and storylines to watch
The NBA Finals are finally upon us, and it’s one of the better matchups anyone could’ve hoped for. There is plenty of star power, and each game should be tightly contested as both teams are known for their stifling defense. The league should be thoroughly pleased with the series we’re set to embark ...
Congrats Boston, but you have no shot against the Warriors
The Boston Celtics have torn through the playoffs, eliminating each team that’s ousted them in the last three postseasons. After a seven-game slugfest with the Miami Heat, the C’s are in Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2010, led by Jayson Tatum, who is making a strong case for ent...
Reformatting the NBA Playoffs could solve the league’s injury issue
The NBA Playoffs are gradually winding down, and to be honest, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag where quality is concerned. Despite the rating increase early in the postseason, some of these games have been hard to watch. Injuries to stars and the lack of downtime between games have some thinking it m...
Whatever sport the Heat and Celtics are playing, it’s trash
A lot of sports fandom and analysis is about feel vs. facts, which can go pretty haywire at times. It definitely “feels” like these NBA playoffs have been uniquely blowout-heavy, but it kind of turns out they haven’t been. There just hasn’t been any game-turning shots in the last minute or buzzer-be...
Miami and Boston meet again in the conference finals and this time their coaches even have history
This year’s Eastern Conference Finals matchup should be a rough, rugged, defensive series that will most likely come down to game seven. The Heat and Celtics are pretty evenly matched and familiar, having faced off in the ECF just two years ago. This will be the third meeting for the Heat and Celtic...
Who do Eastern Conference teams need to worry about in a post-LeBron playoff world?
Last week, the NBA presented and christened its Eastern Conference Finals Trophy after Larry Bird. It was a well-deserved honor for an old Hick from French Lick, who helped pave the NBA’s Gilded Age. However, King James should be the most revered monarch over the East. LeBron was the Eastern Confere...
Jrue Holiday punked out Marcus Smart
Perhaps there was no other way for the Bucks-Celtics game to end on a day after so much discussion about individual awards, thanks to Joel Embiid. Embiid’s right that too much rides on the opinions of others, which made it all the more galling that the MLBPA was accepting of adopting a similar syste...
Kyrie and Kevin Durant’s hero ball system is killing the Nets
Kevin Durant has the utmost confidence in himself and his unique talent. Whether it’s during back-and-forths with the media or in response to team drama, he’s constantly repeating his mantra, “I just wanna hoop.”...
Marcus Smart’s move to point guard earned him DPOY
The most surprising aspect of the Boston Celtics in-season turnaround was that the team did it with a position change rather than trading a major asset. Acquiring Derrick White helped with some much-needed guard depth, but really Marcus Smart being allowed to run point solidified his role and gave h...
NBA playoff matchups we’d love to see (and one we wouldn’t)
The 2022 NBA playoffs is an annual garden of forking paths. Teams don’t know who to expect awaiting them in the next round or when their season will end. One injury can swing momentum in the other direction. What we do know is that there are particular matchups that are more palatable than others. C...
The return of the Celtics
It wasn’t long ago that the Boston Celtics were viewed as one of the more underachieving teams in the NBA this season. ...
With Steph Curry ruled out indefinitely, what of these Warriors?
A once-promising season has turned into an injury-plagued campaign for the Golden State Warriors. The injury bug bit Golden State again Wednesday night in their 110-88 loss to Boston, when Steph Curry went down in the second quarter on a questionable play involving the Celtics’ Marcus Smart. Curry h...
Jaylen Brown injury speaks to the fragility of Boston’s makeup
I almost wrote about the Celtics on Tuesday because I heard about these projections that had them with heavy title odds, but when I went to FiveThirtyEight to try to find them, it felt like I was trying to decipher binary code. So I held off to wait to see if anything came of the research I loosely ...
The Celtics need to wake up and move on from either Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown
The Boston Celtics have one of the richest legacies in North American sports, but as of late, they have not been able to get over that hump to capture another NBA championship. In recent years, their two young stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have led them to multiple Eastern Conference Finals a...
Celtics’ struggles less about style of play, more about players
I don’t blame overconfident NBA players for attempting to take over a game when the only people excited for the Austin Rivers experience are opposing fans. I think it’s less, “I got this,” and more “I want to do the fun thing, too.” Who wants to watch someone play video games when you could have the...
Stupid is as stupid doesn’t do
Andrew Wiggins’ refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine — as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, and backed by ESPN’s reporting — is a near-perfect intersection of inanity....
Deadspin Waffles: Should the Bulls trade or keep Lauri Markkanen?
Over a week into free agency, Lauri Markkanen is still looking for his moment of clarity....
The Knicks’ low-risk offseason is a smart long-term strategy
Is it a coincidence that The LOX and Dipset had a classic Verzuz at MSG Theater less than 12 hours before Kemba Walker agreed to a deal with the New York Knicks? Probably not....
Stop the Bubble slander
The Denver Nuggets are down 3-0, meaning no team who reached the NBA’s Final Four in The Bubble has won a game past Round 1, and one of them didn’t even do that. But these four teams — the Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, and Boston Celtics — shouldn’t be diminished for accomplishing what th...