Sean Fennessey: Have you ever had a really bad zit? The kind that feels as though it’s embedded in your pores, hypertrophied around the dermis and inside its molecular cell structure? So strong and deep and throbbing with acute pain that you’ve considered raising a straight razor to that little patch of real estate on your face? So embarrassing that you’ve skipped school to bury your face in a scalding terry-cloth towel for 14 consecutive hours? So loud and aggressive and red that it feels like a family of hornets is living inside your face?
Marcus Smart has bad skin. He knows that pain. He
is that pain. And he plays like a zit, a nub pushing out of the surface, a little messy, imprecise, and dangerous. Last season, he was a blemish on the game at Oklahoma State, a once fresh-faced superstar freshman who
committed the sin of showing his mug at school for one year too many. And when he came back, that shot oozed pus. Those passing instincts, how hideous they looked. Sometimes he settled, receding back beneath the skin.
Sometimes he ruptured. He’s got the scars to prove it. None of that means very much if you’re measuring a man’s wingspan (a staggering 6-foot-9¾) or sizing up his muscle mass (227 pounds) and assessing lateral footwork (it’s impressive). Smart has obvious tools, a bullheadedness and strength that codes well in a modern NBA backcourt. Still, he’s a zit.
There’s nothing easier to make fun of than a kid with zits. (Except maybe
this guy.)
I don’t usually like players like Smart, guys lacking elegant skills, cool demeanors, and defined roles. Give me Danny Green and Marc Gasol and Nicolas Batum all day — chess pieces with programmatic identities. Smart doesn’t have a position, can’t shoot, and has a temper. But he is what
our boss calls a “badass” — a sociopathic person who will do whatever he can to win, to get better — to pop the zit, scars be damned. I admire him, my scarred comrade. May he ooze into the right environment tonight, where the Proactiv is plentiful.
