Marcus Smart has felt the tension surrounding the Boston Celtics locker room, one that has engulfed this roster amid a four-game losing skid after a recent defeat at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs.

Now two games back of the Indiana Pacers for the fourth seed, Smart and his teammates took part on a post-game meeting, one he hoped served as a wake-up call to shake the anxiety and regain a sense of identity.

“We’ve just got to take a deep breath,” Smart calmly stated after the game as he leaned back in a chair in front of his locker, according to Taylor C. Snow of Celtics.com. “We’ve just gotta take a deep breath and calm down. We’re anxious, we want to get some wins, and we want to get back on the track of winning, but we really got to take a deep breath and get back to the team that really got us the reputation that we upheld into this season. Just being dogs on the court, making nobody want to play against us. Right now, teams just feel like they can do whatever they want against us. That’s on us, we gotta fix it. We will.”

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Besides Smart, the Celtics hardly show any semblance of that defensive engine that scared other teams into playing them, forcing them to rely on an offense that has been come-and-go throughout the season after incorporating Gordon Hayward after an injury-laden 2017-18.

Gaining that identity back could prove the key to making invaluable progress in their chemistry and potentially solve their woes going into the postseason, one they will likely enter as the No. 5 seed with only eight games left to this campaign.