Celtics guard Marcus Smart joined J.J. Redick’s Old Man and the Three podcast for a live episode on the eve of the trade deadline, and when asked about how wide open the race for the NBA title is this season, Smart argued that the Celtics would have won a title four years ago if not for LeBron James.
The 2018 Celtics were built to be a contender led by Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, but unfortunate injuries to both those players kept them out of a postseason run. Instead, it was 21-year-old Jaylen Brown, 19-year-old Jayson Tatum and 23-year-old Terry Rozier leading a young Celtics squad to the Eastern Conference finals, eventually losing at home in Game 7 to LeBron’s Cavaliers.
The Cavs went on to be swept by Kevin Durant and Steph Curry in the NBA Finals – but according to Smart, the Celtics from that team still believe they would have won a championship had they emerged from the East.
“It’d actually be, for me… I forgot what year it was that LeBron beat us in Game 7? So [2018] was probably that for us. We definitely thought that we had a great chance. And to this day we still thought that if we went to the championship instead of LeBron and those guys, we definitely would have beat Golden State that year.”
You can listen to the entire interview below, where Smart touches on the pressure of playing in Boston, and his days at Oklahoma State. Redick also recaps the multiple instances where he thought he was close to becoming a Celtic.
