Boston is known to be a little rough around the edges. In a piece for the Players’ Tribune published Monday, the 26-year-old Celtics guard Marcus Smart detailed his firsthand experiences with both COVID-19 and racial abuse, and why he’s still motivated to work toward change.
Interestingly, Smart noted that the NBA bubble was “pretty damn great,” since it allowed him more time to just sit back and think.
Smart says he “thought a lot about this moment we’re all living through right now. About my experience with COVID-19, the pandemic as a whole, and the ongoing movement for racial justice in this country, about how all those things overlapped.”
His experience with racism, Smart explained, goes back far earlier than 2020. It began as a child, when he was followed around stores. It continued at Oklahoma State, where he says he was called the n-word by a fan of an opposing team.
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This isn't about basketball.
This is about our future. @PlayersTribune https://t.co/tHrxoNeSt6 pic.twitter.com/ENAyTL0ywY— marcus smart (@smart_MS3) October 19, 2020
Still, the most jarring incident for Smart happened just outside TD Garden several years ago, following a Celtics win, when he was headed to his car.
“I saw a white woman with her 5- or 6-year-old son crossing against the light right as the cars were starting to come at them.”
Smart says he tried to yell for her to move out of the street before they were hit, but the woman — wearing an Isaiah Thomas Celtics jersey — turned back and called him the n-word along with other expletives.
“For a second it was like I couldn’t breathe,” Smart wrote.
The incident, Smart explained, made him “feel less than human.”
“I think about that night, that moment, a lot,” Smart says in retrospect. “And more than anything else, I think about … that little boy.”
“It just reminds me that racism is not something you’re born with,” he wrote. “It’s taught.”
The Celtics made it to their 3rd Eastern Conference Finals in four years, but haven’t been able to get over the hump. The C’s future is bright, unfortunately Smart is probably going to have to deal with BS like this for the rest of his career.
Boston, be better.
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