Just a couple of weeks after signing his rookie contract in July, Boston Celtics rookie Marcus Smart said he was about to fulfill a childhood promise by buying his mother, Camellia, a new home.
With the Celtics in Dallas on Sunday in advance of Monday's tilt with the Mavericks, Smart was planning to make the half-hour trek to nearby Flower Mound, where he moved for his high school years, and check out his mother's sparkling new digs for the first time.
"I promised my mom when I was a little boy, if I ever made it to the NBA, that's the first thing I'd do for her," Smart told reporters in Dallas. "Right now, I'm blessed to be able to do that for her."
Added Smart: "She looked at it. She picked it out. She’s been doing all that. I haven’t gotten to see it yet. But she liked it."
Smart's tumultuous childhood has been well-documented and he's often gushed about his mother's guidance, particularly moving the family to Flower Mound. Camellia has been a consistent presence around Smart since his arrival in Boston, trekking north for his introductory press conference in June, then returning to sit courtside with owner Wyc Grousbeck for the team's season opener last week against Brooklyn.
With family and friends likely to be in attendance for Monday's game, Smart will be looking to put Saturday's lackluster effort behind him. Despite a solid opener, Smart played only 11 minutes, 29 seconds against Houston, missing all seven shots he took -- including five 3-pointers -- while finishing with two points, a rebound, an assist and two turnovers.
"I thought he was struggling a little bit,” Stevens told reporters Sunday, according to MassLive. "One of the things that he’s going to have to do is grow through the pain and grow through the good times. He had a great game in Game 1 and didn’t play as well in Game 2. And that’s just part of it. Now it’s about getting better and moving forward. He’s a mature kid and he’ll do that through both."
Stevens didn't seem particularly worried about Smart's struggles, later adding, "I’m not losing sleep over him. He’s a guy that will figure it out because he wants to figure it out."
Not surprisingly, the Celtics appeared to be in "moving on" mode at Sunday's practice after getting walloped in Houston. Boston missed the first 21 3-pointers it attempted on Saturday night and nearly set an NBA record for most consecutive misses without a make before Jeff Green broke up the shutout with 4:10 to play. Boston finished 1-of-25 shooting beyond the arc.
Here's why Stevens probably isn't too worried about the misses: The wizards at ESPN Stats and Info crunched the numbers and, based on last year's league-wide 3-point percentage of 35.97 percent, the Celtics' chances of missing 21 consecutive triples in a single game was 0.0086 percent. Yes, the odds are the team won't endure another night like that again this season.
The bigger emphasis has to be on handling adversity better. And the team didn't appear to be dwelling on the performance on Sunday.
"We came right back to work," said Stevens, according to the team's website. "We had a long film session that was probably pretty boring, but it was necessary, and then we came out and went to work. ... We had a really good practice today."
Stevens later added: "The best teams I’ve ever been a part of, it didn’t matter what happened yesterday. They just come and go back to work."
Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo was not credited with a slam dunk during his 30 appearances after returning from ACL surgery last season. So it was noteworthy that Rondo delivered a transition dunk on Saturday in Houston.
Before the injury, Rondo was known to produce an eyebrow-raising jam on occasion and Saturday's glimpse simply reminded us he still has lift.