When you're going up against the Cleveland Cavaliers, every part of your game plan involves one thing: stopping LeBron James. Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart has been assigned to accomplish this colossal task.
As reported by Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe, Smart discussed his defense on James. Though it was Marcus Morris who usually matched-up against James, Smart shared his strategy and it was pretty straightforward and simple: give the King a hard time. Smart was up for the challenge.
“Our job was to make it as hard as possible for him,” Smart said. “I felt like I could do that.”
The statistics don't really say anything if Smart was successful or not in his defensive campaign against James. One way or another, he will rack up those points and assists. But Smart noticed something that proved that he's doing a good job:
“You saw that he didn’t want to bring the ball up against me, to save energy, which we expected,” Smart said. “I just tried to make it as hard as I could for him.”
When Morris sat down due to foul trouble, Smart had to lock the King up throughout the course of the game. Head coach Brad Stevens didn't single out Smart's superb efforts, but the latter's efforts were felt in the second half.
“I thought we defended a lot better in the second half,” Stevens said. “We have to have five guys playing all-out and really honed in defensively. In the first half, I didn’t think we were as honed in. I thought we were playing hard, but I didn’t think we were as honed in. The second half we were much better.”
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