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Phil Forte on Marcus Smart: ‘He’s the Best Teammate I Ever Played With’

13 talks 33 and what he learned playing with one of the best.

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Marcus Smart signed a new contract with the Boston Celtics a few years ago that will make him generationally wealthy beyond his imagination. Four years, $52 million. Mickey Mouse money, as one friend of mine calls it.

Phil Forte told me recently on our podcast that Smart is worth it in ways that aren’t always obvious to the casual observer. The stuff within the stuff.

“The thing about Marcus is that you don’t realize what he does for your team until you coach him or play with him,” said Forte. “Then you really get to see how he impacts a game. We would keep deflections when I played at Oklahoma State. It was 35+ deflections, you were going to win 90-something percent of the time. So that was our goal. There would be times at halftime where Marcus had like 10.”

For his career, Smart averaged 2.9 steals per game, which is a silly number. He and Brooks Thompson hold four of the top five seasons in steal efficiency in OSU history.

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“He’s the best teammate I ever played with,” added Forte. “I’m a little biased, sure. How he impacts winning. When you’re on his team in practice and in a game, you don’t feel like you’re going to lose. You just don’t. His presence — he’s constantly talking, and he’s the best practice player I’ve ever seen in my life. It didn’t matter if it was a walk-through, he was locked in diving in on the floor. National freshman of the year, and you couldn’t take him out of practice.”

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That reminds me of what Mike Gundy has said about Tylan Wallace in the past. I wrote a little bit about that here earlier this week, but it definitely matters when your best dudes are also your hardest workers.

“You get guys that come in that are like, ‘Oh we got Kansas tomorrow, I got to save my legs.’ You had to beg him to come out,” said Forte. “You walk in the gym, you just notice him right away. There’s a reason the Celtics signed him to a $52 million deal for four years. Let’s all call it what it is, he’s not a great shooter in the NBA. He’d get mad if I told him that, but he’s not. It doesn’t matter, that’s how much the kid wins.

“There’s not many guys like that. The Celtics are a team that’s trying to win a championship, and you have to have a guy like that. … He really impacts winning at a high, high level.”

Love that from somebody who has been through the wars with him. You and I can sit here and act like we know what we’re talking about (and many of you probably know more than I do), but to hear that from the inside (albeit from an incredibly biased person!) is more meaningful.

It shines a light on what matters outside of simply getting buckets and hitting bombs. Those things matter — you can’t win without them — but they probably matter a little bit less than the attention we pay to them (and the value that we assign).

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