Draft consensus is that Andrew Wiggins is likely to be an elite defensive wing in the NBA, as in theory his stellar physical tools ensure lock down D. But there is more to defense than running fast and jumping high, so I am going to use available NCAA data to measure him against my favorite defensive guard prospect in the draft: Marcus Smart. Let’s starting by assessing the inventory around them.
Coaching: Bill Self vs. Travis Ford
Coaching has a huge impact on team defense, so let’s get a feel for which coaches historically built the best defenses prior to landing their respective stars. The table notes each team’s NCAA rank (out of ~350) in adjusted defensive rating as per kenpom.com:
| Season | Ford Team | Ford D Rank | Self Team | Self D Rank |
| 2013 | Ok State | Smart | Kansas | 5 |
| 2012 | Ok State | 111 | Kansas | 3 |
| 2011 | Ok State | 47 | Kansas | 11 |
| 2010 | Ok State | 60 | Kansas | 9 |
| 2009 | Ok State | 74 | Kansas | 9 |
| 2008 | UMass | 58 | Kansas | 1 |
| 2007 | UMass | 47 | Kansas | 1 |
| 2006 | UMass | 40 | Kansas | 3 |
| 2005 | E Kentucky | 126 | Kansas | 25 |
| 2004 | E Kentucky | 230 | Kansas | 16 |
| 2003 | E Kentucky | 301 | Illinois | 8 |
| 2002 | E Kentucky | 274 | Illinois | 19 |
In a nutshell: Self always builds elite defenses whereas Travis Ford doesn’t. Self’s worst defense pre-Wiggins was 15 slots higher than Ford’s best pre-Smart. Of course, this doesn’t prove that Self is a smarter defensive coach than Ford, it only suggests it at a loud volume. But Kansas is a name brand school and it stands to reason that Self should have some advantage given his access to superior talent. Fortunately, Dan Hanner shared his process for making NCAA projections (which he does well) and included coaching as a significant portion of defense projection.
In Step 15 of his article, Hanner notes that he makes projections for defensive statistics (block rate, steal rate, D-Reb rate), prices in recruiting rankings, and gives a boost for players that mysteriously play high minute totals with poor stats (since these types are often are defensive specialists). He also notes that these factors alone do a poor job. Using a 10 year sample from 2003-2012, he measured the greatest impact coaches after adjusting for the aforementioned factors and shared his top 15 defensive coaches. Bill Self rated #1 on his list. Travis Ford didn’t crack the top 15 because he offers no value beyond the ability to attract enough talent to make himself seem competent to athletic directors.
It is common for people to blame Bill Self for Wiggins’ shortcomings, but this is misguided. Self consistently gets stellar regular seasons from players who do not go on to NBA stardom, as his teams tend to outperform their talent before disappointing in the tournament. It is safe to declare that Bill Self completely waffle crushes Travis Ford at building NCAA defenses.
The Bigs
After coaching, the highest impact players on defense are the tall ones. They provide rebounding and rim protection, so it should be no surprise that height correlates with defensive success. Good college defenses are often anchored by good rim protection, so let’s compare the two sets of bigs. Note that total includes each stat’s minute-weighted average for the collection of bigs.
Kansas:
| Player | Minutes | Height | D-Reb% | Stl% | Blk% |
| Joel Embiid | 647 | 7’0″ | 27.3 | 2.3 | 11.7 |
| Tarik Black | 446 | 6’9″ | 21.3 | 1.3 | 4 |
| Jamari Traylor | 549 | 6’8″ | 18.5 | 1.5 | 5.3 |
| Perry Ellis | 973 | 6’8″ | 18.2 | 1.7 | 2.2 |
| Total | 2615 | 6’9.2″ | 21.0 | 1.7 | 5.5 |
Oklahoma State:
| Player | Minutes | Height | D-Reb% | Stl% | Blk% |
| Kamari Murphy | 855 | 6’8″ | 18.3 | 1.1 | 5.1 |
| Mike Cobbins | 256 | 6’8″ | 15.3 | 1.8 | 7.9 |
| Le’Bryan Nash | 1017 | 6’7″ | 14.6 | 1 | 2.8 |
| Leyton Hammonds | 230 | 6’7″ | 12.3 | 1.8 | 0.5 |
| Total | 2358 | 6’7.5″ | 15.8 | 1.2 | 4.0 |
Oklahoma State’s bigs were undersized and unfit to do good things on defense. The Cowboys were rated as the #5 kenpom team with a 12-1 record when Mike Cobbins went down for the year due to injury. Without him they were forced to play small, as Hammonds was largely worthless and when Murphy was on the bench 6’7″ Le’Bryan Nash played C and Marcus Smart was often forced to defend opposing PFs. I’d wager that Smart spent more time as a defensive PF than Wiggins in spite of being a PG who is 5.5 inches shorter. Not only did the small lineup make it exceptionally difficult to protect the rim, but Smart was forced to be used as an undersized post defender instead of putting pressure on the ball on the perimeter. Consequently, Oklahoma State went 9-12 without him and dropped from #5 to #26 in kenpom’s overall rankings.
Meanwhile, Kansas had the defensive player of the year in Joel Embiid whose his size and mobility made him an interior force. He only played 23 minutes a game and missed a handful due to injury, but Tarik Black and Jamari Traylor offered more value as defensive replacements than OKC’s small bigs without Cobbins. This is another clear advantage for Kansas.
Guards
Let’s see how each team compares in terms of guard and wing impact on defense outside of Smart and Wiggins.
Kansas:
| Player | Minutes | Height | D-Reb% | Stl% | Blk% |
| Wayne Selden | 1023 | 6’5″ | 6.4 | 1.4 | 1.1 |
| Naadir Tharpe | 1001 | 5’11” | 7.4 | 1.4 | 0 |
| Frank Mason | 565 | 5’11” | 7.3 | 1.9 | 0.2 |
| Total | 2589 | 6’1.4″ | 7.0 | 1.5 | 0.5 |
Oklahoma State:
| Player | Minutes | Height | D-Reb% | Stl% | Blk% |
| Markel Brown | 1201 | 6’3″ | 12.9 | 1.6 | 3.1 |
| Phil Forte | 976 | 5’11” | 5.6 | 1.7 | 0.1 |
| Brian Williams | 793 | 6’5″ | 11.5 | 2.6 | 1.5 |
| Stevie Clark | 256 | 5’11” | 7.2 | 3.4 | 0.4 |
| Total | 3226 | 6’2″ | 9.9 | 2.0 | 1.6 |
Finally, an area where the Cowboys have an advantage. Non-Smart Oklahoma State guards did not offer a ton of value on D, but at least Brian Williams and Markel Brown had the athleticism to occasionally make a play and Stevie Clark generated some steals in limited minutes before getting kicked off the team. Meanwhile, Kansas trotted out two small PG’s and Wayne Selden, who has an elite body but has yet to figure out how to use it for good on the basketball court. Kansas’s guards were certainly weak links on defense.
This advantage for Oklahoma State is less significant than each of Kansas’s advantages in big men and coaching. Forte was an undersized and unathletic, and Brown and Williams aren’t defensive stoppers, just athletes who sometimes make athletic plays. Kansas’s guards were bad, but guard defense isn’t high enough leverage to weigh this discrepancy more than others given that Oklahoma State didn’t have a second perimeter stopper.
Overall
Kansas has a much better coach and better bigs, whereas Oklahoma State has less leaky guards alongside their star. If the two players made similar impacts, Kansas should have a much better overall defensive rating. Yet they barely finished with a higher defensive rating, as Kansas finished with the 31st adjusted D-Rtg (out of 351) at 96.3 and Oklahoma State finished 37th at 96.6. The two defenses were roughly dead even, and once you remove the 3 games missed by Smart (Oklahoma State went 0-3), Oklahoma State was a shade better than Kansas.
If we look at Big 12 games only (noting that Smart missed 3 games, Cobbins missed all 20, and Embiid missed 5), Oklahoma State had an adjusted defensive rating of 95.9 vs Kansas’s 96.2. If we throw out the 3 games that Smart missed, the Cowboy D-Rtg drops to 94.9 to widen the gap by a point. By all measures these two defenses were similarly effective over the course of the season, and if anything it appears that Oklahoma State had the edge when Marcus Smart was in the lineup. Given the advantages that Wiggins had with respect to coach and cast, this strongly suggests that Marcus Smart was the better and more impactful defensive player. Let’s look at individual stats to check to see how it aligns with the longwinded route. Note that adjusted D-Rtg is individual D-Rtg (as per sports-reference.com) adjusted for team SOS:
| Player | Minutes | DRB% | STL% | BLK% | Adj DRtg |
| Andrew Wiggins | 1148 | 12.3 | 2.1 | 3.1 | 96.6 |
| Marcus Smart | 1014 | 14.9 | 5 | 1.9 | 88.9 |
In spite of all of Wiggins physical advantages, Smart accumulated more than twice the steal rate. Instincts and aggressiveness are key traits on defense, and this is where Smart shines the most.
Individual D-Rtg takes team D-Rtg and adjusts for individual steal rate, block rate, and defensive rebounding rate. Because Kansas gets so much production out of their bigs and Oklahoma State gets so little out of everybody other than Smart, Smart destroys Wiggins. This is the short hand version of my analysis, except it doesn’t account for coaching disparity as there is more team level credit to distribute for well coached teams. Bearing this in mind, there is an argument to be made that individual D-Rtg actually understates the difference between Smart and Wiggins.
What About Age?
It is fair to point out that Smart is a year older than Wiggins and perhaps should make a greater impact given his additional year of experience. But if we look at Smart’s freshman year, the defense was even better as Cobbins was healthier only missing 5 games and contributing 728 minutes total. Many of Brian Williams minutes went to 6’10” Philip Jurick, and Le’Bryan Nash was able to swing between the 3 and 4 instead of being asked to be a full time 4/5. Smart was able to spend all of his time hawking the ball on the perimeter, and the Cowboys finished with the #15 defense in the country.
Smart’s freshman individual adjusted D-Rtg was 85.6, showing that the gap between him and Wiggins widened once he actually played with serious big men. The Cowboy defense should have been a joke this year, and it’s quite the feather in Smart’s cap that they were able to keep pace with Kansas with such little size.
The Coaches’ Perspective
Big 12 coaches vote on the best defensive players in the conference after each season. As both a freshman and sophomore, Marcus Smart was a unanimous selection to the 6 person team. He was the only non-Kansas big to be chosen unanimously (Jeff Withey and Joel Embiid each shared the honor) over these 2 years. Wiggins was left off the team altogether, which surprised me given the level of hype and attention he received. I suppose the Big 12 coaches weren’t as impressed with his defense as draft narratives would suggest, even though he was a unanimous selection to the All-Big 12 first team for his overall play.
Conclusions
Based on every piece of information available and every angle from which it may be analyzed, Marcus Smart was a vastly superior NCAA defensive player to Andrew Wiggins. He was a one man wrecking crew on defense, whereas Wiggins was merely a solidly good defensive player. Given the predictive power of steal rate and the fact that Smart has the tools to become an impact defensive player in the NBA, this should weigh heavily into Smart’s NBA defensive projection.
On the other hand, this should dispel the myth that Wiggins is a guaranteed defensive stud. Hype does not equate to truth, but people seem to treat it as such. It is common for people to seek narratives to justify Wiggins’ hype instead of looking for the actual truth in data that is free of bias. I believe the hype was justified: a 16 year old kid with his size, mobility, and explosiveness is a rare commodity, and it’s worth getting excited over him. But when at age 19 he has shown zero signs of development or impact that were projected, it’s time to scrap the hype and brace for the likely scenario that the person inside the body doesn’t have what it takes to convert the potential into reality.
If Wiggins was truly a high impact defensive player, there would likely be data supporting it. There is data supporting Smart’s impact and there is data supporting Aaron Gordon’s impact, which is why I have them as the top two perimeter defensive prospects in the draft. Wiggins believers can have their 44″ vertical snapshots, I’d rather get Smart and take the guy who produces results.
Dean On Draft 
Aside from being great in transition and being able to jump high and high again very quickly,nothing seems guaranteed about him…What past player at 19 does he remind you of the most?
There are a bunch of different players he reminds me of in various ways. I think he can be like Luol Deng or Thaddeus Young in a good outcome. But he also has an annoying hint of Austin Rivers, at least WRT rim finishing (Rivers was great at getting to the rim and terrible at finishing).
But it’s also hard to directly compare him to anybody bc his tools are quite unique. If you want to compare him to Marvin Williams, for instance, he’s quicker and more athletic. But he also had worse college stats than Marvin, so it’s not like he’s guaranteed to have a better fate.
But then again he also wasn’t too much worse than Paul George statistically, so there is potential if he puts it all together.
So there’s kind of a blend of a lot of different players. I can’t really point to one that feels like a perfect comp.
Here are some stats that showcase the value of Andrew Wiggins to Kansas this year. I’m sure you have seen these but they are worth reiterating.
Click to access 73dc4d_d2230cd74b254130852e10222efbc91c.pdf
The above stats showcase that he was more valuable then Embiid despite Embiid being one year older.
The comparison of Ford to Self seems like comparing apples to bananas. Compare coaches from UNC/Duke/Kentucky for 10 years vs Kansas for 10 year but not Eastern Kentucky and Umass. Ford did a tremendous job at EK and Umass and that is why he got hired for more high profile jobs. If Ford was coaching Kansas/Kentucky/UNC for 10 years, sure he would have better defenses/teams.
Kansas is getting top 10-50 players all the time. But before the recruiting of Andrew Wiggins this was looking like a very bad year for Kansas by their lofty standards.
Embiid can be great defensively in the future but his impact was lessened this year since he didn’t know what he was doing defensively on too many plays and fouling a lot. And its not like he even played a ton of minutes.
Wiggins played lock down defense this year on the perimeter and showed he can guard talented offensive players like Parker. If you put Wiggins in a situation that encouraged him to gamble, his steal rate probably doubles. He proved it to me when he finally started playing closer to the basket more often in the absence of Embiid and started taking some chances like Smart did literally all the time. What happened then? His steal rate doubled.
Smart will be a real good all around defender too even with some ability to guard small forwards but it doesn’t look like he will be able to stay in front of the quick point guards that well.
Those stats don’t show that he was more valuable than Embiid. On/off splits compare him to Kansas’s dreadfully bad guard/wings, of course he’s going to have a sick on/off split since he was also the best offensive wing too. Embiid was being rotated with the competent bigs so his impact is going to seem diminished by +/- even though he was obviously much better.
If you put Wiggins on Oklahoma State at best his steal rate marginally increases. There’s no argument where Smart’s steal rate doesn’t display an obvious disparity in defensive ability.
Embiid isn’t perfect on D as he made his mistakes. But he still made an awesome impact bc his size + instincts were more important, which is why he won Big 12 DPOY and the team turned to crap without him.
Your argument seems a little contradictory. On the one hand, Kansas had good replacements for Embiid so the inferior on/off court ratings in comparison to Wiggins don’t indicate much but on the other hand the team was crap without him. I agree that Kansas had better replacements for Embiid then Wiggins but not enough better to dismiss those on/off stats.
Kansas, a flawed team, wasn’t going to the Final 4 with Embiid and Wiggins so they certainly weren’t going with their 2nd best player hurt(Embiid) and their best player having an off game. Wayne Selden is an ok replacement for Wiggins to take on more of the perimeter scoring/slashing burden but he is a poor compliment since he can’t stretch the floor.
I’ve seen young college centers make great game changing impacts on D(Camby, Duncan, Ewing etc.) and despite his impressive numbers Embiid didn’t come that close to any of them and that is a huge concern of mine even though I recognize he has potential to get better.
Camby’s relative lack of rebounds in college reminds me of Wiggins lack of steals until late in the season. I argued back in 1996 that despite his mediocre rebounding numbers in college that Camby might be able to lead the NBA in rebounding. Why was I so close with my prediction and the people who just looked mostly at the stats wildly off base? I realized from watching the games that Camby was a very good to excellent rebounder when he was near the basket but he was out of rebound position a huge percentage of the time since he was often being instructed to block/intimidate shots over a ridiculously wide area and other much less talented players were tasked with rebounding.
Wiggins this year reminded me of Camby in the sense that his college coach appeared to order him to often guard the opposing teams best 3 point shooter. With Wiggins on that player and not often free lancing, he was often in very poor position to get steals and defensive rebounds. The Kansas coach probably thought this strategy gave his best team the best chance to win since why have him gamble and leave the team more exposed from 3.
And defense is about a lot more then just steal rate. Lebron when he wants to be is a great defender but his steal rate isn’t nearly as high as Rubio. Rubio gambles for steals a lot more.
I don’t see anything that suggests Wiggins won’t be great on D fairly early in his NBA career. I doubt he ever finishes 2nd in steals like Camby did in rebounds but I do suspect his NBA steal rate surprises you. And more important then anything else plays lock down defense.
The only thing that probably prevents Wiggins from playing great NBA defense is if his offense gets better then expected and he ends up resting on D like Kobe often did after the Shaq years when more of his energy was spent scoring.
The nightmare scenario for a team that drafts Wiggins is he overrates his offense and puts 75% of his energy there. Other then that, way too much defensive ability to fail on that end. He put in the effort on D this year and was great at challenging shots.
I’m from Brazil and I’m reading your blog about the draft because I’m a Celtics’s fan and I have the picks 9, 12 and 15 for my fantasy team. Your informations are very good. Besides Smart, who do you think is the most NBA ready SG of this draft class?
I don’t know, this draft isn’t rife with SG’s in that range. Would be cool if you could play KJ McDaniels at SG but he’s a SF IMO. Nik Stauskas might be your best bet if you can bear not getting rebs, steals, or blocks. Spencer Dinwiddie is a bit of a reach at 15 but might be worth considering. I’d also think about Jordan Adams if he gets a good landing spot.
Thanks, man. Thinking about the best player avaiable, who would you pick 9, 12 and 15? I read you post about Nurkic and I like his game a lot, too. What do you think about Elfrid Payton?
Too soon to say. A large part of it is who lands in a spot where they project to get playing time off the bat. For now just target guys high on my big board who fill up the most stat categories.
Your evaluations always seem very skewed…… I think I’ll still to draftexpress
All I do is look at facts and data. Not my fault they don’t imply the conclusions you were hoping they would.
I would call Wiggins less than the full monty defensively. He has exceptional lateral mobility but a variety of factors go into perimeter D
Lateral quickness
Length
Strength
Feel for the game/reading plays/etc.
Motor
Wiggins has the first, but the last 4? He’s slightly above average for length (by like an inch) but is skinny, so his length+strength may be a wash defensively. He doesn’t strike me as an exceptionally heady defender and while I feel his motor ‘issues’ are likely to be overblown, he didn’t kill it out there either.
It means Wiggins is a good defensive prospect but he’s not a legendary defensive prospect.
Well speed + athleticism matter too and he has PF length for a guy who can guard wings or even PG’s. His tools are good.
But I agree on all other points. Strength/feel for the game/aggresiveness are the 3 areas where he gives a solid bit back to preclude himself from becoming legendary on D. People talk about his passiveness hurting him on offense but it’s probably an even big deal on defense.
Believe his length is 7 flat wingspan. Avg SF 6’11 average PF 7’2. Ford tweeted PF standing reach (8’11) from the workout but since Parker’s st reach was like 3 inches more than what hoop summit measurements said, I’m suspicious of Wiggins and Embiid measuring so high in reach
Yeah reach measurements seem to be subject to a bit of variance. Layne Vashro informed me that while reach is more predictive than height, it’s less predictive than height + length in tandem. But having an above average wingspan for SF is real good when you have quicks to stay with PG’s.
I’m not sweating Embiid’s reach though since it’s not more than you’d expect for his height/length combo. His measurements are the hotness.
Wiggins doesn’t have the strength right now to guard 3’s but I suspect he gets that within 3 years. I doubt he ever has the size to guards 4’s but just guarding 1-3’s will be very valuable.
I’ve defended Wiggins D/steal rate in an above post but I don’t think he will be a “legendary defender” like lets say a Pippen/Payton but that is very hard for any perimeter player to do nowadays. Pippen because of his length had a little bit better tools on defense then Wiggins but even Pippen wouldn’t be quite as good today since the NBA doesn’t allow all of the aggressive hand checks on the perimeter.
In fact, at least for guarding the 1-3’s, Wiggins defensive abilities fit very well with the modern NBA. There are all of these PG’s that are incredibly difficult to stay in front of. And a bunch of mediocre SG’s that a teams PG’s often try to cover to rest on D.
But any team is making a mistake if they expect one wing player to totally transform a teams porous defense. Young Jordan was an amazing defender with tremendous energy on both ends but even Jordan couldn’t be at two places at once and smart teams just didn’t challenge him often 1 on 1 unless it was a clear mismatch.
Pippen was a great defender without Jordan but he still had Grant during the year that Chicago was great without Jordan.
First, on/off stats are going to be not exceptionally valuable in a vaccuum. Wiggins spent all of 262 minutes on the bench, that is a nearly meaningless sample of “off” splits. Given the fact that all of the Kansas guards + wings other than him were pretty bad, I’d expect the off sample to be both lackluster and subject to heavy variance. It is simply not a stat that merits much attention.
What’s more important is that the “on” split isn’t stellar for a guy reputed to be so good defensively. I already made the argument for Aaron Gordon’s steal + block rate being not that important given that his team so vastly overachieved with an elite defense. Wiggins doesn’t have that team level of success to point to in order to excuse his steal rate. Self does preach a non-gambling style which gives Wiggins a bit of an excuse, but if Wiggins defended at a truly elite level why were the Jayhawks not top 20 on D? Kenpom projected them to be top 10 pre-season and that’s without knowing that Embiid was going to be a stud. Selden deserves a hearty portion of the blame but it’s another area where Wiggins failed to live up to expectations.
I agree that a wing cannot transform an NBA team’s porous defense. But NCAA is a different game: look at Marcus Smart’s impact on Ok State’s D– it is mindblowing that he kept them that strong in spite of all of the bad coaching and lack of size. So if Wiggins couldn’t transform Kansas’s D, that puts a dent in his probability of becoming a high end defensive wing in the NBA. And given all of the holes in his offensive game, there is a lot of pressure on his defense to be stellar in case his skills don’t develop awesomely. And if he’s not going to be a stud on either side of the ball, how does he end up justifying a top 3 pick?
He can still be a good defensive player but it’s not a lock. Maybe he’s only an average defensive player. I don’t see any statistical indication that he is great on D other than Kansas being bad in his SSS off splits, and in watching him he seemed to be lacking the extra gear of intelligence + intensity that Smart + Gordon bring to the table.
Dean-
For whatever reason, it seems like you see what you want to see with Wiggins.
You say that Wiggins doesn’t have a stellar “on” split, and you call Embiid a defensive stud. Yet, they have nearly identical “on” splits!
I already addressed the on/off split thing. Kansas’s non-Embiid bigs are >>> Kansas’s non-Wiggins guards/wings. Also Wiggins off sample was only something like 262 minutes which is a really small sample.
Also I don’t see what I want to see. I see what is actually there. I have zero pre-existing biases against Wiggins, public perceptions just so happen to miss the mark on him THAT badly. If public perceptions weren’t hilariously wrong on occasion I wouldn’t have bothered to create a site where I make my own predictions.
on the ok-state D i suspect there is a big contribution form markel brown, at least in the game i watched
He’s pretty good for college based strictly on athleticism. I don’t think he was any sort of stopper who made nearly the impact of smart though.
I think Smart is the best defensive small prospect in this draft, above Wiggins or Gordon. I dare say his defensive potential is Jason Kidd-like. He has a Kidd-like body and defensive versatility. He also has Kidd-like, Chris-Paul-like hands, where guys have to be very careful with their dribble around him because he can snatch it away in a flash. He has it all defensively except for height: great strength, long arms, exceptional lateral quickness with which he can not only stuff the first step but the second and third and so on, and he’s dangerous in the passing lanes. It’s going to be an upset if he doesn’t make many, many all-nba defense teams and do it deservingly. Teams have for ages turned to big wings to corral point guards to turn games. Phil Jackson sicced Pippen and Jordan on Magic, Kobe on Rondo and Westbrook. Paul George guards Jeff Teague, Lebron guards Tony Parker, etc to turn the tide. Smart is capable of providing that kind of big wing defense against point guards all game long. That’s going to be a huge weapon.
Finishing it all off, he is damn smart. I was blown away by how well spoken he was in interviews. He was by far the most impressive. By comparison, Jabari kept trying so hard to project professionalism and leadership but mostly spewed a bunch of cliches and misused the word understatement. Smart didn’t have to try so hard to come off as well-spoken. Smart’s extremely crafty on the court, maybe too crafty and floppy but with his intelligence and work ethic, he’s going to be someone who knows other players tendencies and has the physical abilities to use that information.
As a Celtics fan, I’m thrilled with the pick. Give me two-way players who can do four or five different things on the court. I think the second best part of his game is passing.
Yeah, I agree, Smart is full of goodness. I think Jason Kidd is a pretty good defensive comparison. Smart doesn’t quite have Kidd’s offensive package since Kidd was such a great passer, but as a Celtics fan I’m thrilled with this pick. Smart just emanates goodness through and through.
The selection of Smart makes me miss Pierce more. His rough-hewn style and multi-dimensional skill set reminds me of Pierce. They both love to play basketball. Smart and a young Pierce would’ve been a great duo. Instead Pierce had an all-time chucker in Walker as his early running mate and then wasted most of his prime before he got to play with great teammates. Such dumb management.
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