After their Game 2 loss to the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics fans were upset. They were down 0-2, which is a hard thing to come back from in “the bubble.” They had been up by double digits in the second half of both games. Their young Head Coach had troubles with a fairly basic 2-3 zone by the Heat. And, to make matters worse… All of the reports that followed the game were about a rant in the locker room that was audibly heard with the doors closed. Specifically, Marcus Smart was heard through closed locker room doors.
Look, everyone who has played sports has seen this locker room. When you’re a competitor, and you’re on a team with other competitors, there are moments you’re at your teammates throats. It’s not necessarily a sign of dysfunction, but it is a sign of discontent. Competitors have that fight, and while some are quiet and some are loud, reaching a boiling point happens.
But it doesn’t always happen with a crowd of reporters outside, loud enough for them to hear through a closed door, and loud enough that they can tell which player it was.
Reports indicate that there was a loud clanging of something thrown, a few expletives, some yelling, some more yelling, and some more yelling. Folks heard the expletives… Folks heard all of the yelling… But no one, besides those inside, saw what Marcus Smart hurled across the locker room.
There are some locker room objects, when hurled across a room into the wall, that are more satisfactory than another. Without knowing much more than something was thrown, here’s a breakdown of what the best options for throwing something across the locker room could have been.
5: A Clothes Hanger
I understand that an NBA locker room has lots of clothes hangers. Each jersey, warm up shirt, shorts, pant, and jacket the players wear during the game has its own hanger. The players hang their (sometimes elaborate) clothes up, item by item, to keep them fresh for the post game pressers. So I get it… a clothes hanger would have felt easily disposable. Throwing it across the room wouldn’t have even taken a second thought.
But think about the possible outcomes.
Say it’s a cheap, metal wire hanger. It may make some noise, but it maybe bends when it hits the wall. It maybe bounces off a solid two or three feet. If it’s a wooden or plastic one? It maybe cracks and falls next to the wall.
But, what’s worse?.. It maybe hits a teammate in the face. And then you’ve got metal wires near peoples eyes. If you though being down 0-2 was bad, try being down 0-2 and one teammate being halfway blind. The risk / reward ratio of throwing a clothes hanger makes no sense, even if there are a lot of them close by.
4*: A Sneaker
For starters, part of this ranking is the simple all-white Puma Uproar sneaker. That is, in looking at modern basketball shoes, as dull as it gets. So it’s not like Marcus Smart launching the shoe he just took off across the room would necessarily carry weight in sneaker circles…
The shoe’s impact with the wall may be loud, but would it be otherwise noticeable? It bounces, hits the ground, and sits there. Nothing happens to the shoe, and probably nothing happens to the wall, either.
While the noise is an important boost for the sneaker, it may be worth noting he could have had his own custom Puma slippers nearby. Throwing a sneaker is boring, but had Smart thrown a slipper, similar to the traditional chancla, he may improve his stock. While throwing a chancla is a Latino tradition, if he perhaps picked it up while growing up in Texas, the idea of throwing a shoe may become much cooler all of the sudden. So we will asterisk #4.
3: A Chair
So, this may have been the heaviest option besides a physical player (though to be fair throwing a physical player would have made this a much bigger story). But throwing a chair implies a level of calculation that makes this interesting.
If the chair hit the wall and made the noise, implications are it was thrown from a long ways away. If a chair was hurled across the room, that isn’t something you just do. Even the most hasty decision maker double checks he’s not going to smack someone with said chair.
The detriment of the chair is much like the clothes hanger: what type of chair would it had been? A cheap, metal folding chair would have been loud. It could have been impactfully loud.
But, who buys that those NBA guys are sitting in cheap, metal folding chairs?
Now, if this was a more comfortable, expensive, and heavy chair, this seems silly. The NBA went through all of this trouble to get the NBA Bubble set up… And in anger after a loss, someone decides to break it all? What does that prove? Fughettabowdit. That chair isn’t even just his, it’s a shared chair for each team that uses that locker room. It’s not like it is easy to find chairs that are the appropriate size for an NBA player… What is he thinking?
2: Gatorade or Water Bottle
This is one of the cooler options… no pun intended. The idea of a bottle filled with liquid reminds us of when JR Smith threw a cup of soup at Damon Jones… it’s demeaning, insulting, messy… And it gets a point across.
A key part of this visual is throwing the vessel with liquid coming out. Had there been bright red Gatorade spilling out of a bottle on its way to the wall, the humor meter goes WAY up. Had it been sealed, but burst everywhere all over the wall, that would also be very funny, and give this a very high rating.
This isn’t quite a number one option though. On the one hand, the mess this option creates is very funny. On the other, it would be very difficult to clean up, and the likelihood that Smart himself cleaned it up is… well, low. If he was angry enough to create this mess, I have my doubts he was present enough to clean it.
1: Brad Stevens’ Whiteboard
This option has everything. It is inexpensive, relatively speaking. Stevens likely has dozens of them, and they’re available on Amazon for $8.99. This option has funny level of mess. The board definitely would’ve shattered on impact into a bajillion pieces. This option has cleanliness, because it wouldn’t stain the carpet or wall, and would be easily swept up.
But, most importantly, this option is a pointed attack on Brad Stevens. Stevens, known for his prowess as a play caller on out of time-out sets, could not figure out how to break the Heat’s 2-3 zone. His late game offense has been glorified isolations for Jayson Tatum, even though Kemba Walker has done their clutch shot making this year.
Smart had every right to be pissed at Brad Stevens following a Game 2 loss. That he symbolically shattered his coaching abilities while yelling about it only adds to the scene without detraction.
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