I'm not going to sit here and hate on Smart because you know I don't like him, but watch how dramatically the style of play changes on offense when Smart gets on the floor and how the defense focuses on the more imposing threats on the floor and sorta ignores him. He really does mess with our chemistry and floor spacing on offense with the bench which is actually apart of our bench unit struggling as bad as it does at times. Because it's either a wild Smart post up, a brick 3, or a pick and roll in which Marcus gives it up every time because he knows he's not a threat to get to the rim. And he tries to run the bench unit despite this.
He should not be getting 30 minutes per game and honestly Brown should be taking some of his time because Brown can stretch the floor, get to the rim, and can use his length and superior athleticism to play the tougher to guard players better than Smart can. At times of course because very rarely is he consistent enough defensively for Brown.
Brown stretches the floor? I like Brown. I think he is promising. But I think people are overrating him right now. Brown has a long way to go before being able to be relied on in crunch time.
Smart has has a brutal month offensively. Like brutal. But he still contributes in positive ways (assists, defense, clutch plays). At worst, he's Tony Allen in my opinion. Considering Allen has been in the league 13 years and been a top notch defender, that's really not a bad thing.
His offense will always be a question mark. But he's also not utilized properly on offense imo. He's incredibly efficient down low against guards and they don't use him enough down there. That was a staple of J Kidd. I read the below article the other day that had some pretty interesting advanced stats on Smarts post up game.
https://16winsaring.com/how-marcus-smart-has-developed-into-an-elite-post-player-9d043f32eaf2From the article
This year, Smart has scored on 53.3% of his post touches, per Synergy Sports data. He is tied for fifth in the league on that mark among players with at least 75 post-ups on the season. His 58.2 FG% on post-ups is second-best in the league.
He’s also fifth in the league in points per possession on post-ups (1.04 PPP), behind only Danilo Gallinari, DeMar DeRozan, Nikola Jokic, and Kawhi Leonard.
So basically what I'm trying to say is less 3s, more post ups.