The Boston Celtics find themselves in an unenviable situation during their Eastern Conference Finals matchup with the Miami Heat. Despite leading in the second half of both games, the Celtics are down 0-2, and following Thursday night’s 106-101 loss, reports indicated that tensions boiled over in the locker room, with mercurial guard Marcus Smart screaming at his teammates.
One day later and some more details have come out about exactly what went down. Per Shams Charania of The Athletic, Smart and Jaylen Brown got into it with one another, and while no physical altercation occurred and the two have “smoothed tensions over,” the pair needed to be separated.
Sources told The Athletic that Smart stormed into the Celtics postgame locker room saying that other players needed to be held accountable and not simply point the finger toward him when things are going wrong. As Smart continued and his voice grew louder, sources said Brown snapped back and shouted that Celtics players must stay together and that their actions must come as a team, not individually, and that Smart needed to cool off. Those sources added Smart had verbal exchanges with a couple of the assistant coaches during the game.
Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN added some details of what went down. While he confirmed that the two did not get physical with one another, Brad Stevens sat down with a collection of players — including Brown and Smart — to talk things over.
ESPN Sources: Brad Stevens had a late night Thursday meeting with Celtics leaders – Kemba Walker, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart – to work through emotions of post-Game 2 locker room. A lot of yelling in locker room, but nothing escalated to a physical confrontation.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 18, 2020
Smart is the heart and soul of the Celtics’ locker room, so it’s not a huge surprise that losing back-to-back games in the conference finals is something that irked him. Besides, with how Boston has looked over the first two games of this series, someone bringing a major sense of urgency is something that could be really beneficial for them, so long as things did indeed get smoothed over and this doesn’t rear its ugly head should the Celtics face any adversity over the remainder of this series.
