How to optimize Marcus Smart’s offense
COMMENTARY
Marcus Smart is not a good shooter. Anyone who watches the Celtics on a regular basis can tell you that. Smart does enough things right on the floor, particularly at the defensive end, that the team is happy to live with his shooting ups and downs. But there is a way to put Smart in position to optimize his offensive contributions, and it’s to use him more in the post.
Before we get to that, let’s talk about Smart’s three-point shooting. Just like last season (and the season before), Smart is averaging four three-point shots per game. And he’s still not making very many of them. Last season around this time, we discussed how Smart was having the worst three-point shooting season of all time. And he did end up having just that. So far this season, he has been better, but that’s damning him with faint praise, because he’s still been really, really bad. Instead of the worst three-point shooting season of all time, he’s having the 21st-worst three-point shooting season of all time. His three-point shooting is still a drag on the Celtics’ offense.
In NBA history, 565 players have taken at least 500 three pointers over the course of their career, Smart included. Of them, Smart’s career .291 3PT% ranks 546th. It gets worse if you up the threshold to 800 (Smart has now taken 802 threes in his career). There have been 429 players who have taken at least 800 threes, and of them, Smart ranks 419th — 11th-worst ever. He’s actually not that horrible from in the corners, but as a point guard who frequently has the ball in his hands, it’s hard for him to get to the corners. He shoots just 9.8 percent of his shots from the corners, as opposed to 31.7 percent of them from the other areas of three-point land, and he is absolutely dreadful from those areas — 55-for-215, for a .256 3-point percentage, which is well below the league average (~.350).
The Celtics seem to recognize this, and have been posting him up more this season, or opening up the offense to let him drive into the middle. After averaging 4.7 two-point shots per game last season, Smart is up to 5.5 this season. And there’s one area of the floor where he is actually shooting better than the league average.
This is a shot plot of all of Smart’s shots this season. That red cluster just inside the foul line? That’s where Smart has really excelled. That’s the area of the floor where he has been posting up. The NBA is presenting new data from Synergy, which tracks players shooting by different shot types. There are 10 different shot types, plus a miscellaneous category for those shots that don’t fall into one of the 10 categories. Of these 10 shot types, Smart takes four of them with at least 10 percent frequency. Let’s look at how he does in each of them:
As you can see, Smart is clearly at his best when he is shooting from a post-up position. The percentile column is for the whole NBA, meaning Smart is better than 82.6 percent of the NBA when he posts up. Of the 86 players who have taken at least 10 percent of their shots from the post this season, only 12 of them score with a greater frequency than Smart does, and Smart shoots for a much better percentage in the post than he does elsewhere.
The reasons for this are pretty clear when you watch him. While he’s not very tall, Smart is very strong and quick. The combination allows him to get separation on the block, and near the free throw line. That separation helps create space for him to get his shot off.
It’s not just that Smart is at his best as a shooter when he gets the ball in the post. He’s also great as a passer in those situations. In addition to their Synergy data set, which is tracked manually, the NBA also uses data from SportVu, which tracks its data with cameras. And that data shows that Smart is one of the best passers in the post.
As you can see, the only player on the list ahead of Smart is Memphis center and three-time All-Star Marc Gasol. In the top five (which extends to eight because of ties) you have league MVP Stephen Curry, his teammate (and All-Star) Draymond Green and five big men — all of whom are at least 6’11” — and Smart. That Smart (who is just 6’4”) is not only holding his own in the post, but thriving is pretty remarkable. Anecdotally, he has made a number of nifty interior passes that lead to easy buckets in these situations, highlighted by his pass on Sunday that helped seal the win over the Heat.
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) March 27, 2017
In a traditional lineup, having one of your guards in the post wouldn’t make much sense. But the Celtics are not a traditional team. One of the reasons coach Brad Stevens has been so successful with this group is because he has tailored his game plans to his players’ strengths, rather than try to shoehorn them into roles they’re not proficient in. Smart may be only 6’4”, but his skills are better suited to the post, and as he’s proven he can’t shoot threes, Stevens is starting to find other ways for him to score. Hopefully that will continue as the Celtics gear up for the playoffs.
