Your Morning Dump... Where Wyc makes it official

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

“The Truth” will be back in the Celtics organization soon enough, though his next role with the team has not been determined just yet.

“There have been conversations in general by people close to him,” said Grousbeck. “But we haven’t been allowed to talk directly to Paul while he’s been playing. He’s made it clear he’ll always feel like a Celtic and this is his basketball home. I think he wants to come back. We’re a little busy right now, thank goodness, and we’ll speak to him when the time is right.

“I’d like to get Danny [Ainge] and Brad [Stevens’] input on it the this offseason, and see what Paul would like to do. But he’s a finals MVP, and the last player to wear No. 34 for us.”

98.5 / Sports Hub

No surprise here. In his write-up, Jay King said this news was about as surprising as snow in a New England winter.

Mark Murphy over at the Herald caught Brad Stevens’ comments about Pierce:

“His legacy is incredible with all that he was able to accomplish in all those years,” he said. “Obviously the championship being the highlight of it. What he’s done and the way that people around here speak about him, it speaks for itself. I don’t know him very well, I’ve only talked to him maybe twice in my life and that was just in passing. But I feel like I know him really well because of the way people talk about him around here.”

So, from the sounds of it, Brad Stevens might be having a lot more conversations with Paul Pierce going forward. I for one am interested in what Pierce will be doing for the Celtics. For starters, I think they should put him in charge of their facebook and twitter accounts

Someone tell Paul Pierce you can have more than one twitter account without buying two phones #TheTruth pic.twitter.com/7MxKcMSNhE

— #FreeBrittneyGriner (@CandlestickWill) February 19, 2017

pic.twitter.com/SIyHJjDScR

— Paul Pierce (@paulpierce34) July 8, 2015

Seriously, though, watch this clip a few times to get excited for tonight’s game:

Page 2: Where Smart is getting smarter

“I just decided to take myself out,” said Smart. “Things were going wrong and I was making a couple mistakes. Everyone else was playing good, so I decided to take myself out and let those guys keep going, and really calm myself down and get ready to go back into the game to finish the game.”

…

Over a 30-second span near the beginning of the fourth quarter, he threw a lazy pass that John Wall picked off, got stripped by Otto Porter, and committed back-to-back fouls. After subbing out briefly, he did return to the game, but missed a tough scoop shot then fouled Bojan Bogdanovic on a 3-point shot. Bogdanovic’s four-point play cut Boston’s lead, which had been 15 points, all the way to four.

MassLive

So, on the one hand, you could make a big deal about how Smart wasn’t able to ‘flip a switch’ and stop making bad decisions out on the court. And that’s kind of fair. But on the other hand, one of the issues with Smart the last few years is that he hasn’t been very good at recognizing when his actions are hurting the team. So credit him for learning something about himself.

Also, it says something about Stevens that Smart felt comfortable enough with both his place on the team and with his coach to ask to sit. In a league fueled by out-of-control egos, what happened on Sunday was pretty unusual.