It'd be nice if we could look at Marcus Smart a month into his sophomore season and say he was guaranteed to be a superstar for the next decade and a half.
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Smart is still a top prospect from the 2014 draft class. I figure everyone knows that. Only a few overly fretful Celtics fans seem to doubt that at this point.
Sure, everybody would love to be able to say he was guaranteed to be a superstar for a decade and a half.
The fact that we can't do that isn't the basis of the concern being expressed here, though.
For me, Smart has shown me enough to give me optimism about his potential as an above average starter, maybe even a borderline All-Star caliber player.
But every young player has to reach a point where they stop just showing flashes here and there and actually start putting together an extended run of games where they show you what their ceiling might me.
There are plenty of things Smart has done consistently over time -- play great defense, force turnovers, show confidence taking shots from outside, keep the ball moving, make smart plays, hustle his butt off. Every one of those things he does are really nice attributes to have in a player. I'm glad he's on the team, and the Celts are significantly better with him than without him. It's hard to find too many first or second year players you can say that about.
All of that said, what's the best month he's put together so far?
Probably April of last season, where he put up 8.3 points, 2.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 2.1 steals on 42 / 32 / 50 shooting in 30 minutes a game. He was +12.4 in that month.
What's his signature game? Maybe that performance against Westbrook and OKC? Maybe last year against OKC, when he also scored in the mid twenties. Smart has three 20+ point games in his career so far.
Based on all of that, I guess where I'm at is that I have zero doubt Smart will help teams win for a long time so long as he stays healthy. I'm just worried about whether he'll ever come close to being a genuine, consistently productive offensive piece, which is what you hope to get when you pick a guy in the top 10.
Then again, the counter here is that you could probably make a similar worried argument about a number of these exciting prospects. Not many of them have put together a lot of high production performances, and those that do have such performances have mostly done so on teams that weren't playing for anything at the time.
Following the Celts so closely and placing a lot of hopes on Smart in particular means being able to see the flaws a lot more clearly in this case.