Smart on Celts: We’re playing like punks
Late Wednesday night, Marcus Smart stood against a wall in the hallway that leads out from the Celtic dressing room. He was not happy -- a state of being that certainly fit the earlier 117-109 loss to New York. It was the Celts’ third straight loss and seventh in their last 10 games. With a .500 record 18 games into the season, Smart was in no mood for any more “it’s still early” talk. “It’s the same old song,” he said in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “You know, it gets annoying. I don’t even know what to say at this point. You’ve already done heard it. I’m tired of talking about it. I don’t know.” As bad as the Celtics have looked, however, it’s not as if they don’t have the talent or time to get it together. But with the way Smart was talking, I wondered if he was still confident his club could get to the championshipcontending level it had been planning on since last summer. “I am,” he said, “but we’ve got to stop sugarcoating things. That’s the problem. We’ve got to stop sugarcoating it. We’ve just got to call it what it is. We’re playing like punks; that’s just what it is. “It’s not everybody. You’ve got guys out there that are playing and playing hard. That’s some, but we don’t have all five guys at the same time. So teams are going to continue to whup us.” It may be messing with semantics, but sometimes it’s hard to decipher whether the Celtics are not playing hard or if they’re just being tentative, almost unsure. Smart has no indecision on that count. “It’s us not playing hard,” he said. “It has nothing to do with being tentative, because obviously you see guys jacking up shots, so it can’t be us being tentative. “You know, at some point when a guy scores on you repeatedly -- a team busts on you repeatedly -- eventually you’re going to get tired of it hopefully. But that’s not the case with us. We’re OK with getting down 20 or getting down early or letting teams get hot, letting teams feel comfortable.” That last word seemed to almost spit from Smart’s mouth as if it was a curse. Comfortable. He shook his head. “Until we can fix that, we’re going to continue to be in this situation,” Smart added. According to Stevens, the Celtics are not defending properly at the point of attack, and certainly it seems the Celts are trying to stick to a scheme rather than doing the attacking themselves. Smart doesn’t see room for differentiation. “We’re not playing defense,” he said. “There’s no defense. There’s no defense. There’s no defense. Guys are getting where they want to get, when they want to get it, how they want to get it. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to that.” There is not much the Celtics can say at this stage. They will speak with the media, and reporters will quote them, but -- barring a player uttering something that divides the dressing room -- the words will matter little in the grand scheme of things. It’s about actions. The Celts open a trip of three games in four nights Friday in Atlanta. There and in Dallas Saturday and New Orleans Monday, they could play with the kind of intensity and cohesion that rights the ship. Or they could fall under .500 and bring all manner of consequences into play. “There’s always the belief that we can be better,” said Smart. “Always the belief. That’s the thing though. There’s still belief, but, you know, you’ve got to get tired of hearing that same old song. It gets played out, and you get tired of it. And right now we should be tired of hearing the same old song. “If we’re not, that’s a problem.”