There’s at least one team ‘linked’ to a Marcus Smart trade
The Marcus Smart trade market features at least one team, with the Dallas Mavericks linked to the polarizing guard, according to the latest trade rumor roundup from Bleacher Report’s Eric Pincus.
“One dark-horse team mentioned as being interested in [Jerami] Grant was the Dallas Mavericks, with Dorian Finney-Smith and probably Dwight Powell as the primary pieces,” Pincus wrote when discussing the Mavs’ potential moves. “The Mavericks have also been linked to [John] Collins in Atlanta and Marcus Smart in Boston.”
If you care to read into these things, the Mavs’ reported interest in Smart wasn’t a headline grabber per se, with the 27-year-old somewhat buried in terms of the other players mentioned as possible pieces of interest to Luka Doncic’s squad.
But the reported interest from Dallas does come with the Celtics being “extremely active” in the trade market in an attempt to potentially reconfigure the pieces around Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, according to Heavy.com’s Steve Bulpett.
“The club also seems ready to alter a course charted with last summer’s transactions,” Bulpett wrote.
That feels telling given what last summer meant for Smart, with the longest tenured Celtic signed to a max contract extension last August and with the C’s committing to the idea of Smart being their No. 1 option at the one.
The 6-foot-3 Smart has averaged 11.6 points, 4.0 assists, and 5.3 assists per game, and has averaged a career-best 33:58 per night for first-year head coach Ime Udoka’s squad. Smart is also shooting 39.4 percent from the floor, which is his third-best single-season figure to date, though his three-point shooting (30.5 percent) remains an issue.
Smart is far from the first Celtic to find himself involved in the rumor mill, too, with previous reports indicating that the C’s are trying to move vets such as Al Horford, Josh Richardson, and Dennis Schröder between now and the Feb. 10 deadline.
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