Marcus Smart re-emerged from a tumultuous summer for Celtics media day Monday looking for basketball to provide what it always has for the Celtics’ guard – solace, and a place where the world makes sense.
His mother, Camellia, died on Sept. 16, after a harrowing summer of treatment for bone marrow cancer. Along with spending every possible moment in Dallas with her – at one point moving her into an apartment across the street from her treatment facility in Dallas – he weathered a somewhat strained negotiation with the Celtics to sign a new four-year deal.
But nothing could put his basketball life more in perspective than the loss of his mother.
“The last couple months, not days, have been real – real humbling,” Smart said. “It kinda sends you back to reality. But I have a very good 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 it’s the easiest part for me because I have a lot of people around me. The hardest part is probably going to be when everybody has to go back to our own lives and that’s probably something that is going to be the hardest. I’ve seen part of this before. So that takes away from it and it makes it a little bit easier. I don’t think it’s ever really easy to lose a loved one, especially your mother. But like I said, I have a great supporting cast.”
And, above all, he has that ultimate salve – basketball. The sport has nursed him through hard times on many occasions.
“A lot of people have heard me say this and explain it this way: I look at basketball as like a storm. But it’s the eye of the storm – a tornado or something like that,” said Smart. “The calmest place of it is to be right in the eye of it. And that’s what basketball is for me; it’s my eye.
“And while everything else around me is going on, the destruction and things like that, basketball keeps me calm. That’s probably why I go out and you see me dive on the floor, or take a charge, or throw my body this way and give it everything I have because I know and understand that any day could be my last day.
“And if it were, would I be proud of what I accomplished in that time period? God has blessed me with an ability to go out there and play the game that I love to play. And I don’t want to regret that. So I feel I need to go out every day and play like it’s my last.”
Smart’s feelings were admittedly hurt when the Celtics didn’t immediately reach out to him at the start of free agency on July 1, after offering him only a qualifying offer to retain matching rights once he entered the restricted free-agent market.
That all apparently changed the day Smart signed his new contract.
“There’s no bad feeling between me and the organization,” said Smart. “I knew coming in this was a business. You have to overlook the business side to build a relationship personally with certain people, certain organizations, certain teams.
“At the same time, it’s a business. They were just doing their business part just like I was and we came to an agreement and I’m back. Like I’ve said, I love Boston and Boston loves me.”
The most encouraging part, according to Smart, was the sight of coaches and teammates at his mother’s memorial service.
“To see those guys show up at the service was actually a surprise to me,” said Smart. “I didn’t know anybody was really going to show up. I mean, Brad (Stevens) told me he was coming and a couple of my coaches, but my teammates Al (Horford), Terry (Rozier), Jaylen (Brown), Daniel Theis, Semi (Ojeleye) and those guys showing up – not only those guys but my friends and family – that meant a lot to me and it just shows how much this organization, as a family, cares for one another.”
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