Tag Archives

2 Articles

With Marcus Back, the Smaht Money’s on Boston

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

When Patrice Bergeron returned from injury during the Maple Leafs series, he made the Bruins better. But I wouldn’t say he was the difference. Too many hockey players (20 to 22 of them from any one team) participate in playoff games to connect the dots through any non-goaltender, unless that man’s name is Gretzky or Crosby. Basketball is different. The playoffs typically shorten any team’s bench to 7-9 guys. I don’t see the Celtics losing this series to the Bucks if Marcus Smart is able to play.

Smart tore a tendon in his thumb six weeks ago. Kyrie Irving went in for the first of two knee surgeries three weeks later. Irving is clearly the best player on this team. Without him, the Celtics aren’t good enough to make The Finals this season, much less win them.

But Smart’s return should win the Celtics this series and perhaps the next. He’s that good, that influential, and it’s sort of amazing how far under the radar he manages to fly.

When the playoffs started, national media and the talking heads on ESPN and TNT made a big deal about how Boston would contest these playoffs without two starters, Irving and Gordon Hayward. But the latter has been gone so long (having gruesomely wrecked his ankle in the season opener), it honestly doesn’t feel anymore like we’re playing without him. In theory, Hayward is a stud, exactly the sort of wing shooter the Celtics need. But he was a brand new free agent signing back in October. He might have taken Boston to the next level but we really don’t know for sure. [One thing is for sure: If he had played this season, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown would not have progressed as far as they have. The minutes and end-of-game possessions would not have been there for them.]

But too many folks missed the fact that Boston opened these playoffs without three starters, because Smart is one of the five best guys on this team and the best all-court defender in the NBA. He might not have started every game, but he finished every game (that mattered). Without Irving and Hayward, Boston will always struggle to score down the stretch. But with Smart guarding the other team’s best player (a role he relishes and routinely occupies), with Smart representing a massive upgrade over plucky-but-limited Shane Larkin in the guard rotation, the Celtics are a different team.

There is no one in basketball quite like Marcus Smart, and I’m not sure why the rest of the league fails to appreciate this fact. He is the best defender on the league’s top defensive team but garners no laurels. He wasn’t even named to the All-NBA Defensive Team last season, when he was healthy. See here that list of 10 honorees from 2016-17:

1st Team

Chris Paul

Patrick Beverly

Kawhi Leonard

Draymond Green

Rudy Gobert

2nd Team

Tony Allen

Danny Green

Anthony Davis

Andre Roberson

Giannis Antetokounmpo

This is a pretty fair representation of top NBA defenders for 2017-18, as well, but Chris Paul and Tony Allen are shadows of the defenders they were 5 years ago. Beverly and Kawhi have been hurt all this season. Roberson has been out since January and is a complete offensive liability. Danny Green? He blocks it well for a 3, but otherwise I don’t know what he’s doing on this list. Draymond, Gobert, Anthony Davis and the Freak are superb defenders — as big men. They are a particular type of defensive asset; they are not all-court defenders.

Once we remove those bigs, I would take Marcus Smart over any of the remaining six guys. Of those who are injured, only Kawhi compares. At 6’4” Smart can check your point guard, your shooting guard, your small forward and most of the league’s shrinking 4s. He routinely guards LeBron James and drives him crazy. He is perhaps the only guy in the league to get inside James Harden’s head.

There is no one quite like Marcus Smart playing in today’s NBA. I’ve been singing his praises for several hundred words now, but I haven’t even detailed his best qualities: He’s wicked smaht. In fact, he’s flat-out smahter and more competitive than anyone in the game today, with the possible exception of LeBron — who is so good, he allows his competitive nature to flag on occasion. Marcus never does.

He is not without fault. Marcus is not a good shooter — a reality underlined by the fact that he refuses to acknowledge it. Though he shot just 37 percent from the floor this year (30 percent from 3), Smart never hesitates; he shoots with the confidence of Bradley Beal — which, in a perverse sort of way, makes me love the guy even more.

Like I said, the Celts aren’t going to The Finals this year. Ultimately, while injuries have catalyzed the development of Brown, Tatum and Terry Rozier (which bodes well for next June), Boston doesn’t have the horses to play for a title this June. But with Smart back and Brad Stevens pulling the strings, they’ll beat the Bucks — probably tonight.

Bob Ryan Retires: All Hail the All-Time NBA Sage

Bob Ryan Retires: All Hail the All-Time NBA Sage

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The encomia are surely piling up across the web, but I couldn’t let slide the fact that Bob Ryan has retired from The Boston Globe as full-time basketball sage and de facto Commissioner of all things hoops (a title bestowed decades ago, by his fellow scribes). Here’s a link to his farewell column, delivered Aug. 11 with his signature directness, brevity and authoritative elegance.

Having grown up in Greater Boston, I latched onto Ryan early, in the mid-1970s, when the Celtics were winning championships and knowledge of the team was nearly the exclusive province of Mr. Ryan, whose game reports and columns were often the only worthwhile analyses available the next morning. Yes, some games were televised locally, but only a few. Radio was an option, but Johnny Most was so bombastic, his account of the goings-down, while entertaining, could not be trusted.

Above all things, Ryan could be trusted — to authoritatively tell you the “why” behind wins and losses; the “who” when it came to contenders and pretenders. His appraisal of players was never erring. When Larry Bird was drafted, as a junior, and all of Boston watched his senior year at Indiana State wondering if his game would translate to the pros, Ryan put that matter to rest. He sized up Bird a basketball genius way before it was obvious to the rest of us, and so Larry turned out to be.

His between-the-lines sizing-up of personalities was similarly spot on and vital to a young basketball mind in its formative stages. It really was about the guy’s authority. You could tell when Ryan truly admired a player (Dave Cowens) or didn’t deem one worth a damn (Sydney Wicks). It was clear when he admired someone but didn’t necessarily like him (David Stern), and when someone didn’t like Ryan (Tommy Heinsohn). It was all done very professionally, perhaps a bit coyly, and I found it all thrilling — that someone could earn a living by chronicling such fabulously interesting things in a public forum.

All through my high school, college and early years as a sports writer, Bob Ryan’s professional life was the one I wanted for myself. One time, in high school, circa 1979, my mom got us tickets to a Celtics game (vs. the Jazz) at the old Boston Garden, where she endeavored to introduce me to the guy before tip-off. I remember that he was cordial but not especially helpful or inspiring. My mom was a bit disappointed, but I couldn’t hold it against him — he was probably concocting some new way to convey to readers the utter ineffectiveness of James Hardy and Ben Poquette.

I did indeed try to follow Ryan’s path but his times were not my times. In his farewell column, he writes about going straight to the Globe sports department after graduating from Boston College in 1968. In the mid-1980s, no one did that — years of daily newspapering experience were required before one would even be considered. Further, by that time, the Globe sports section was a veritable all-star team of talent, and thousands of aspirants were all clamoring for the opportunity to sit at Ryan’s knee, along with those of Will McDonough, Peter Gammons, Dan Shaughnessy and Leigh Montville. Even if you had the experience, and the chops, the Globe was notorious for its minority hiring policies. I remember one reporting colleague claiming that he’d already have a job on Morrissey Boulevard, “If only I were a black, female, Cape Verdean.”

In any case, dreams die and/or they’re deferred. I left daily newspapers in 1992, having had a chance to cover the Celtics (and all the Boston teams) for smaller newspapers with nothing like the Globe’s reach and influence. I was tired of making no money, tired of being essentially nocturnal. Soon the newspaper model would collapse, and I frankly count my blessings that I got out when I did.

Ryan pressed on through this period of industry decline, adapting to the web realities and even moving into television a fare bit. Personally, I could listen to him talk about basketball and other sporting matters till the cows came home, but I think even he’d admit that his rapid-fire, staccato delivery — along with his advanced age — never truly dovetailed with the medium as it exists in the 21st century.

This winter, at the height of the Jeremy Lin craze, Ryan sat and did a podcast with Bill Simmons, the guy who has emerged as Ryan’s heir apparent on matters NBA. Check it out here; it’s linked as part of my own post comparing/contrasting Billy Ray Bates and Lin. It would seem that Simmons was the guy who successfully crafted for himself a Ryanesque place in the basketball firmament, and I enjoy his writing and podcasts nearly as much.

Best of luck to them both. The torch has been passed.