Basketball is the center of attention for Marcus Smart, a guard with the Celtics.
Smart remarked, “I see basketball as a storm, but it’s the eye of the storm,” on Monday during media day. “Being in the center, or the eye of it, is the calmest place to be,” and for me, that’s exactly where basketball is. It’s my eye. Basketball helps me be calm when everything else around me is happening, including distractions and other stuff. I know and understand that any day may be my last, which is probably why I go out and you see me dive on the floor, take a charge, or lay my body this way and give it everything I have. Would I feel proud if it was
Smart is no stranger to loss. One of his brothers died in 2004, and he’s still grieving following the recent death of his mother, Camellia, who lost her battle with myelodysplastic syndrome — a form of cancer caused by abnormalities in the blood-forming cells in bone marrow. Smart spent much of the offseason in Texas to spend time with his mother, telling reporters in June his family, not his contract, was his No. 1 focus. He called the last couple of months “real humbling.”
“It kind of brings you back to reality,” he said Monday. “I have a great supporting cast around me, a great community in Boston and in Dallas behind me, a great organization in the Celtics, friends and family, so right now is the easiest part for me, because I have a lot of people around me.”
Smart anticipates the hardest part of the coping process will be when “everybody has to go back to work.” For him, however, going back to work means re-joining a team that is on the cusp of what the players have dubbed a really special season.
“I don’t think it’s really ever easy to lose your loved one, especially your mother, but like I said, I have a great supporting cast,” he said.
Smart said he wasn’t expecting anybody other than coach Brad Stevens and a few other members of the coaching staff to attend the memorial services for his mother. When Al Horford, Terry Rozier, Jaylen Brown, Semi Ojeleye, Daniel Theis, co-owner Wyc Grousbeck, and others came to support, he was moved by the large turnout.
It really surprised Smart to see those guys attend the service, she added. “Being with my family and myself mattered a lot. It only goes to demonstrate how much this group of people values one another as a family.
This offseason, Smart’s future with the Celtics seemed uncertain at one point. However, in July, the two sides reached a $52 million, four-year agreement.
“I have no animosity toward the organization,” he declared. “I was aware from away that this was a business. We occasionally ignore the business aspect in favor of developing a personal relationship with individuals, groups, or teams, but remember that business is business. Like me, they were simply going about their business.
