Analyst hopes the former heart and soul of the Boston Celtics has already completed his season’s play.

Analyst hopes the former heart and soul of the Boston Celtics has already completed his season’s play.

Despite setting career highs in scoring and overall field goal conversion rate, Marcus Smart, the former center of gravity for the Boston Celtics, has not had the finest first season as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies.

As a result of the season’s disastrous start, which saw the Grizzlies lose almost twice as many games as they won before the All-Star break, Mark Giannotto of The Commercial Appeal thinks that Smart, Desmond Bane, and pretty much every other long-term player for Memphis ought to sit out the remainder of 2023–24.

Giannotto said, “Memphis) should take into account the potential that Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart have played their final games of the season. They should also think about how they may accomplish the same with Jaren Jackson Jr. Finding hidden gems and developing the young players around their core are essentially their only remaining sources of motivation, so they should approach the final 26 games following the NBA’s All-Star break like the largely pointless venture that they have become.”

The’most competitive thing Grizzlies could do’ was not playing Marcus Smart, a former Boston Celtics star, or other veterans.

Giannotto went one step farther, asserting that the most competitive thing Memphis can do is to sit Smart, Bane, and Jackson. By this, of course, he is speaking to the long term rather than the already-lost 2023–24 season.

The Grizzlies might be more competitive if they avoid playing Bane, Smart, and even Jackson in the last minutes of the season since their main priority should be to position themselves to contend once more in 2025, according to Giannotto. “The only outcome over the next two months worse than what’s happened already, worse than watching this season go up in flames due to a barrage of unfortunate injuries, is to see next season affected by injuries before it even begins.”

The Grizzlies may be on the right track if Ja Morant can return healthy in 2024–25 and they can find a suitable replacement for Steven Adams. And with teammates in Boston like Isaiah Thomas, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Al Horford, and (to a lesser extent) Kyrie Irving, Smart will once again be on a contender, something he was probably always a part of.