Marcus Smart’s return to the Celtics shows early preview of a revived offense

There was a moment late in the Celtics’ loss to Brooklyn on Thursday where the Boston offense looked like it was about to fall into another one of its cycles of stasis. Jayson Tatum looked off the roll man to take on Jeff Green in isolation, down seven points with three minutes left. Kyrie Irving edged over to loosely double, meaning it was time for another Tatum step-back.

Then something happened the Celtics hadn’t seen in a while, or at least since late January. Marcus Smart cut through the lane and made some magic happen.

After spending the past month-plus trying to establish a consistent and persistent offense, the fundamentals of a high-pace, low-turnover system were back in place. The new ingredient was Boston’s de facto captain, the proverbial glue that has been holding everything together through sheer force of will and often too much panache seemingly his whole career.

Yet it was Smart doing the simple and savvy things that made Boston’s offense look, at least stylistically, closer to where it is supposed to be in theory. Though the Celtics lost the game 121-109 in spite of Smart’s 19 points in his return from a grade 1 calf tear, there were plenty of moments that reaffirmed what their four-game winning streak heading into the All-Star break suggested: even if it is going to be a winding and bumpy road, there is a path toward contention for the Celtics even this year.

Getting there will take more of this. A lot more of this.

A play like this is huge because this was the first game in the entire season where the Celtics had four capable scorers off the bounce on the floor at the same time. It was just exceedingly rare that a player besides Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Kemba Walker could take a handoff and actually drive down the defense’s throat to finish at the rim. Jeff Teague can do it when he has his floater going. Payton Pritchard can get there before picking the ball up and trying to pivot his way out of a trap. Based on the brief flashes he showed in the bubble, Romeo Langford should be able to do this decently once he eventually gets back.

Having that fourth guy that can dribble penetrate is the difference between running a play and running an offense. That’s been the grand struggle for the Celtics since Al Horford left, as he was that secondary elite playmaker on the floor that gave the team its second branch of playmaking.

In the most generic offense, the point guard is setting up the play to get the star involved and create looks for the rest of the team off of that main action. The league’s elite players are good enough on the ball to bridge that playmaking gap and the Celtics have gone through growing pains building up Brown and Tatum to that point. They’ve gotten far enough along the way in their development curve that they can certainly run an offense. But it has been apparent how limited those units have been before Walker and Smart were back.

Even when Tatum and Brown were sharing the floor, they would attack off an action, swing it to the other guy and he would try to do the same. But everyone else was standing around watching, waiting to be the recipient of the drive and kick or be the screener. It wasn’t a motion system like the way things flowed when Horford was the hub next to an elite pick-and-roll point guard. That team was able to move the ball from elbow to elbow much more effectively, with shooters stretching to the corners that knew how to lift up to the elbow when the ball swung the other way and be ready to catch and fire when it would quickly swing their way. There was energy in the ball and it elevated a team with moderate talent to play a tier higher than it should on paper.

Getting Smart back out there just makes them, well, a smarter offense all around the floor. He solves so many of the spacing issues that have stalled out Boston’s offense this season with his cutting or even his yelling at teammates to cut. Watch Smart envision the entire play as soon as he inbounds the ball in the video below.

Smart knows the Nets are loading up two on the ball in their zone and that gives the Celtics a two on one advantage in the right corner. If the Celtics were deeper into the rotation, those players would most likely just stand there and hope they could swing the ball quickly enough to get off a shot. But Smart recognizes that the low man defender Tyler Johnson is ready to run out to Pritchard, and Irving is close enough to the wing to rotate over to Smart and contest his shot.

So Smart tells Pritchard to cut baseline and force Johnson to follow him under the basket and prevent a wide open layup opportunity. Because Irving is, for some reason, turning his back to Smart and completely locked in on the ball, he misses the whole thing and it leaves Smart wide open for 3.

He also quite simply gives the team another player to attack in the first action while Tatum and Brown are taking a breather. The Celtics’ two All-Stars have been run into the ground trying to carry the team this year and it’s showing more than ever, with one of them having a sloppy shooting night seemingly every game right now. So it’s just a nice bit of balance when Smart can be the one to get the ball swung his way in early offense and be able to go all the way with it.

That top-heavy usage will ease up with Walker and Smart assuming a larger share of the offense, with Tatum and Brown forcing isolation possessions less often out of necessity. It will still happen out of desire, to their detriment.

But just as Tatum will put on his blinders in the mid post or Brown will telegraph a pull-up off a handoff, Smart is bound to take a few wild shots to cancel out some of his great plays. He even managed to do it on the same play, making a (too) brilliant pass out of the post to a rolling Rob Williams before resetting the play and taking an unnecessary contested heat check early in the shot clock.

There’s a difference between taking off at a green light and driving across town in first gear. Somehow Smart has never figured it out. If there was ever a question of whether it was worth going along for the ride, the last few months of Celtics misery made the answer pretty clear.

Danny Ainge still needs to make a trade in the next few weeks, and Brad Stevens still needs to empower his young players such as Aaron Nesmith and Grant Williams more in the second half of the year. But Smart’s return is going to be another shift in the status quo for a team still in striking distance, yet clearly not yet ready to fly at the same altitude as the league’s elite.

(Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images)

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