Celtics Back Smart as Rob Williams’ Defensive Player of Year Case Grows

This year’s NBA Defensive Player of the Year race features as many legitimate candidates as any in recent history. The Rudy Gobert advantage persists, but Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Bam Adebayo loom as dark horses. Draymond Green’s everlasting importance on the Warriors’ second-ranked defense became apparent through his absence. The Celtics’ emergence as the unmatched No. 1 defensive unit, riding their lockdown scheme to 23 wins over their past 31, deserves recognition too.

Who will challenge that field from Boston? The Celtics are rallying around Marcus Smart, despite strong cases for Robert Williams III, Al Horford and Jayson Tatum as well. Their starting five’s length, switchability and rotations on a string clearly make theirs a team, rather than an individual effort. That may undercut any Celtic from winning the award outright, unless Boston’s defense reaches such an unmatched echelon it warrants a winner. The Celtics played at that level again on Wednesday, holding a formidable Warriors offense to 29% shooting in the first half before winning, 110-88, to begin a four-game west coast trip.

“(Smart) is the defensive player of the year,” Tatum said, swarming his teammate during his post-game interview on NBC Sports Boston.

Williams III agreed earlier in the week, despite his own gaudy statistics that bode well toward becoming the Celtics’ representative in a typically analytically-oriented award race. Big men regularly boast the best defensive metrics and stand as anchors inside. Only Kawhi Leonard (twice) and Ron Artest have won as wings since Gary Payton won in 1995-96, the last guard to do so. Out of 38 DPOY winners, 28 were big men.

The Smart and Williams III comparison raises an intriguing debate regarding what the award means. Smart may carry the best defensive reputation in the NBA, with opponents, coaches, scouts, media and front office personnel lauding his heart-and-soul forming the Celtics’ identity. Smart’s also an expert communicator, something most voters outside the Boston market would have a difficult time gauging the value of without watching every night.

“I think Smart deserves it, to be honest,” Williams III said last week. “A lot of my defensive grit and my will to fight out there, I get from just watching him. Even in practice, him being vocal, him on the court. He’s a great defensive anchor for us, but he’s a better leader and he doesn’t even know it. He’s always talking, putting guys where they need to be. I feel like Smart should be the number one runner for that … he’s a vocal leader out there, not just on the defensive end, offensively too. The way he starts our games off. He sets the tone with a lot of our games. Coach is telling us to key in on a certain player, he’ll start off the game telling us ‘look, I got him, we’re gonna make it hard on him.’ It’s easy to follow a leader like that, that has that grit. He just directs us so well. He knows what play is coming, he’s always in our ear telling us that when they skip the ball this way, drop down, they’re gonna throw a skip pass and we’ll steal it. Like I said, it’s easy to follow a leader like that.”

Williams III will boast the flashiness and a strong narrative, as the story of how Ime Udoka positioned him away from the actions, unlocking his elite help side shot blocking and taking the Celtics’ defense to a new stratosphere gets told more often. Opponents shoot 40.2% against Williams III, the top mark any player logging 57 games has held their competition to. He ranks sixth in defensive rating (103.4 points per 100 allowed), third with a 6.7 block percentage, contests the eighth-most shots per game (11.7) of any player and has the third-most defensive win shares in the NBA (3.7).

Wednesday’s Celtics win at Golden State not only showed Williams III’s elite ability to send shots flying around the rim, but also the deterrence factor that’s usually a staple in Gobert’s case for the award. It exists for Williams III too.

The Warriors shot 17 of their first 26 attempts from three, not daring to challenge Williams III and Al Horford inside. Smart, arguing for guards in general rather than himself, explained the work the perimeter players put in.

“I don’t see why it’s hard for a guard to win it,” Smart said last week. “We talk about what bigs do, and you know I’m not taking anything away from bigs, but we have to understand that in order for the guy to get to the big, he gotta get by his guards first. Most of the time, we’re making it so hard that by the time he gets to him, big, all he got to do is send it back the other way. We’re doing a majority of the hard work, but for us to not even be talked about in the discussion, let alone win it, that’s some B.S. We all know it. It’s a popularity contest. You got me and Rob, we’re not even in discussion for it on the best defensive team in the league. I think that says enough for us.”

That’s fair. Boston’s scheme utilizes Williams III’s rim protection at its core, but the team’s ability to defend in isolation holds roughly equal importance. The Celtics try to make teams attack one-on-one, and while some like the Grizzlies, Pacers, Mavericks and Hawks recently tried to switch Williams III into perimeter coverage, they find he’s often more effective in those spots than they expect, or force awkward actions to get into those sets in the first place. It’s another trap that makes Boston’s defense a cheat code. They want teams to get distracted attacking what’s seemingly the Celtics’ weakest link with their least superior offensive players.

Boston aims to prevent Williams rotating to the perimeter by predictively switching, which he mentioned involves forecasting plays. Smart manages and communicates much of that. On the play below, he keeps Williams stationed in the lane as a deterrent to Kyrie Irving, even as Brooklyn tries to pull Williams outside. That’s also why Smart’s among the steals leaders (his 2.6 STL% is T-7th) in the NBA this season, predicting passing lanes and movements.

Williams III admitted he needed to learn to become more communicative, something that didn’t come naturally, but proved necessary if he was going to play on the back line of the scheme with so much happening in front of him.

“I think it’s self-explanatory what (Smart) does for the team. The tone that he sets on a night-to-night basis,” Udoka said post-game on Wednesday. “He mentioned it and it’s somewhat true, that guards are overlooked at times. You look at the rebounding numbers, you look at shot blocks and versatility, but the guards on especially our team have versatility as well. We can put them on anybody. Obviously one-through-five, put him on Green at times or any of Curry, Thompson, Poole. And so I think it gets overlooked because of some of the numbers that stand out with rebounds and defense, but he sets a tone for us on a night-to-night basis. I think he mentioned how him and Rob not getting recognition on one of the top defenses in he league doesn’t really make sense. It’s like MVP or all-star voting, you’re based on wins and your record, and I think defense should be in the same category.”

Williams III can be described as Boston’s anchor, but when it comes to statistics, Horford could even have a case for being the team’s best overall defender. His ability to switch onto Luka Doncic established the Celtics’ defensive dominance early in Sunday’s game, and he’s consistently and effectively rotated onto a variety of perimeter players as the point man in defending the pick-and-roll.

Horford works the hardest among Boston’s defenders, and allows Williams III to rove away from players like Bruce Brown rather than needing to bang with an Andre Drummond.

That’s where the Celtics may lose out on the big defensive award, settling for multiple All-Defensive team appearances rather than one big beneficiary of what’s becoming a historic defensive season for Boston. Even the second unit is doing some sharp stuff where Payton Pritchard scrambles out of mismatches and everyone rotates on a string to grind offenses down to the end of shot clocks. Derrick White stands among the league leaders in charges taken, along with posting strong defensive metrics.

Boston’s starters have posted a 92.9 defensive rating through 400 minutes, the best of any any unit playing at least 300 minutes together by more than two points per 100 possessions. If there’s any way those five could win defensive player of the year together, they probably would.

Smart could claim DPOY as the organizer, who has a strong reputation among voters, and that would almost be affirmation for his entire career, which transcended the past lockdown one-on-one player into something closer to the ultimate team defender in the modern NBA. Like a late-career Grammy for the artist who didn’t win one for their classic, except Smart’s defending at a level above where he ever has previously.

“I don’t play the game for the individual accolades,” Smart said. “I play the game to win games and that’s my job, and whatever comes with it I’m blessed to have. Blessed to have an opportunity to be in the discussion or whatever, but it does suck for us guards. You grind, you sacrifice your body, you’re the one diving on a majority of the loose balls, you’re the one taking the charges. You’re the one taking the bumps and the bruises and sending it to the big man, and making sure as an individual, you’re doing everything before he gets to that back line of that line … I think my game speaks for itself. You put me out there in front of anybody, I promise it’s going to be a battle.”