After nine seasons as a fixture with the Boston Celtics, guard Marcus Smart has a new home with the Memphis Grizzlies.
He was sent there in a big and stunning trade that brought Boston Kristaps Porzingis and radically remade their supporting cast around Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
Smart had locks of green hair while in Boston, and although that tint is still there, he says he will soon switch to a blue hue to match his new team’s primary color.
Marcus Smart is keeping the hair green for now, but says it’ll go blue for his next cut. Big update out here in Vegas. pic.twitter.com/cTRWgA3hwc
— Jared Weiss (@JaredWeissNBA) July 7, 2023
When Smart arrived in Boston as the No. 6 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, the team was rebuilding shortly after trading Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets for some future first-round picks.
But with Smart emerging as a defensive maestro, and with two of those picks resulting in Brown and Tatum, the Celtics re-emerged as a contender after just a few years.
In the last seven seasons, the team has reached the Eastern Conference Finals five times and the NBA Finals once, but it has failed to win the world championship.
That failure is presumably what led to the big trade that sent Smart to the Midwest.
There, he will provide valuable guard depth behind Ja Morant and Desmond Bane and strengthen a Grizzlies team that was already one of the NBA’s best on the defensive end.
They finished third in defensive rating and had the second-best record in the Western Conference during the regular season, but they fell to the resurgent Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.
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