‘Strong likelihood’ of Game 3 return
Smart confident C's will be fine with or without him
Marcus Smart says there’s a “strong likelihood” that he returns from a one-game absence to play Saturday in Game 3 in Milwaukee, but even if he doesn’t, he knows how the Celtics should begin their afternoon in a hostile environment.
“I look at it as like when you were a little kid, you running from school, everybody got in fights, a lot of us got jumped before,” he said after Thursday’s practice. “My mama always told me, if you’re outnumbered, you might as well be the first one to initiate and start a punch, because you’re outnumbered. You might as well take one with you.
“That’s how it is. You’ve gotta go in and you’ve gotta be able to throw that punch first, knowing everybody is against you and you’re going to have a battle on your hands. So it definitely feels good, and I think as a competitor, the good ones and the great ones, they enjoy it.”
After experiencing the opposite sensation in Game 1, when the Bucks landed the first punch on his Celtics, Smart doesn’t want to go back there again. He’s anxious to do something more than in Game 2, when he stood in the corner at the end of the Celtics bench in an ornate sweat suit and stared down his teammates on the floor.
But first he has to sufficiently heal from the painful thigh contusion he suffered in Game 1. As he admitted Thursday, the hit he suffered landed on the exact spot of a thigh bruise earlier this season that forced him to miss time.
Imaging taken of the injury, according to Smart, has not revealed anything alarming.
“(It) said everything is fine, everything is working,” said Smart. “It’s just the stars lined up at the right time and got hit in the right spot. So just continue to do what I’ve always done when I get hit here and allow the staff to do their job and the treatment they’re giving me and staying positive and pushing myself to get back onto the court.
“Just play through it. It’s like a Charlie horse on the quad,” he said. “It’s just, I guess, an over-exaggerated one because of the spot where it is and the fluid being in the area. You want to be very, very cautious of that.”
Though Smart has improved since suffering the injury, there are still restrictions. He still feels pain when crouching in a defensive stance, for instance.
“Yeah, that’s where the majority of it is and what’s keeping me back, is because of that fluid in the knee that’s restricting that movement to really bend down as much as I need to, especially to be able to get into a defensive stance and to be able to push off,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to be able to go out there and play if you can’t do that, so once we can get the fluid off of it, everything else will be alright.”
That in turn would end something equally painful — Smart’s relegation to a sideline role, where he seemed to spend as much time on his feet as the coaches, possibly more.
“It was very difficult. I was very, very antsy that whole day,” he said of missing Game 2. “Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even take a nap. Just wishing I was out there with my guys. It’s really tough, and my guys know, anybody who knows me understands that if I’m gonna miss a game, especially a playoff game, something’s really got to be wrong with me. So it was really tough from that aspect, but I have to listen to my body and do everything I can to get back out there. But out of this into my body in the same formation to that and allow my body to do what it does and to heal.”
The Celtics’ Game 2 response helped.
“Loved it. I mean, it was expected. We came out flat the first game and give all credit to the Bucks, they did what they were supposed to do, and us going on home court we couldn’t go down 0-2, so it was expected for us to come out the way. I’m just proud of the way the guys responded, and I’m glad that everybody had a helping hand in that and stepped up.”
Now his bruised thigh has to do the same.
“Yeah I did get beat up. It’s part of the game, but it’s just the quad, the fluid,” he said. “Just take it, like I said, day-by-day. The staff is doing a great job with treatment and exercises to help strengthen the quad and get the blood flowing and things like that. So we just tested it today on the court, felt, okay, I’m a little sore, still. I still have some fluid, so it’s still restricting my movement a little bit. And we just go from there. They’re doing everything they can and I’m doing everything on my part on my end to get back on the court.”