Marcus Smart giveth and Marcus Smart taketh away.
After being a positive on both ends of the court through the first 47:58.8 seconds of the game on Wednesday against the Spurs, Smart had one heck of a faux pas.
During his attempt to end the game with a downcourt pass to Hachimura with 1.2 seconds remaining, Smart’s left foot never got out of bounds and, more specifically, was touching in-bounds as he threw the ball.
The result was a nervy ending that saw the Spurs have multiple chances to tie the game.
Fortunately, the Lakers escaped with the win and, postgame, Smart took the blame for the mistake…mostly.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Smart said of his reaction to the call “I mean, I think when I released the ball, they said I stepped over. We see the play all the time where a guy gets the ball out quick and his leg is like this and he’s still out of over [the baseline] and he throws the ball in and there’s no call. But to have that call at the end of the game, 1.2 [seconds left], we got a guy wide open, all he has to do is catch [and] the ballgames over, it’s kind of crazy.
“But as a 12-year vet, I can’t make that mistake. I can’t even put the ball in their hands to have that call called against us. So I take full ownership of it. My teammates understand. They’re going to joke with me. They’re going to let me hear about it, but it’ll never happen again.”
Does Smart realize that his foot was not simply hovering in-bounds but was touching the floor? Because the call was inarguable.
And while he has a point that it’s the type of call that rarely happens in a game despite violations semi-regularly occurring, I don’t think he’s going to get much sympathy on this one. Considering the time remaining and that all eyes were on him, he wasn’t going to get away with that one.
Having said all that, this is the Marcus Smart experience we signed up for. And it’s been overwhelmingly positive so far this season, so I doubt anyone is going to complain.
In fact, he nearly made up for it on the next play. On the ensuing inbound, Smart’s defense led to the ball ricocheting out of bounds. The officials ruled it Spurs ball and, despite everyone being able to see that it should be Lakers ball, the call stood.
In the Last Two Minute Report on Thurday, the NBA admitted it was an incorrect call and that it should have been Lakers ball.
I suppose the good news of all this is that this sequence that I have never seen in a Lakers game before won’t happen again, according to Smart, so we have that going for us!
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on BlueSky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
