Marcus Smart, Kristaps Porziņģis and the Celtics trading their soul for a title shot

Sometimes you don't win with the players who brought you to the brink, and that's sports.

The Boston Celtics decided that trading Marcus Smart — their longest-tenured member, a driver on five trips to the Eastern Conference finals and the only guard this century to win Defensive Player of the Year — for Kristaps Porziņģis, a tantalizing 7-foot-3 talent, gives them a better shot at the NBA championship, and that's the business of sports. There's a difference, and the crux of this deal lies in the space between.

There are reasons on paper this trade makes sense for the Celtics. They had a logjam at the guard position, where Smart, Derrick White and Malcolm Brogdon all met annual values around $20 million in sub-All-Star ways their own, and Payton Pritchard's promise lay waiting on the final year of his rookie contract. They also needed reinforcements in the frontcourt, where Al Horford just turned 37 years old, Robert Williams III is one year removed from two knee surgeries and neither provided consistent playoff scoring production.

Porziņģis balances Boston's roster around the All-Star wing tandem of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown (even if they could use someone to spell them, too), and there is another dimension to the depth he adds. In theory, the Latvian can play alongside Horford or Williams and bring a bit of both when he mans the middle alone, spacing the floor as a plus 3-point shooter while rim-protecting and -running with a 7-6 wingspan.

Porziņģis is coming off a career season at age 27 for the Washington Wizards, averaging 23.2 points (on 50/39/85 shooting splits), 8.4 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.4 combined blocks and steals in 32.6 minutes per game. Smart averaged a far less efficient 11.5 points (42/34/75 splits) and a team-high 6.3 assists a game.

You could make an argument that any one of the three central figures is the best player in Wednesday's three-team deal between the Celtics, Wizards and Memphis Grizzlies. Smart is one of the best defensive players in the game and a proven playoff winner. Porziņģis is a one-time All-Star with rare abilities for his size. Tyus Jones, whose move to Washington made room for Smart in Memphis, was the league's best backup point guard, averaging 16.4 points and 8.1 assists (against 1.5 turnovers) in 22 games as a starter.

All three may meaningfully improve their new teams in aspects the others could not. The Celtics also secured the only two first-round draft picks that moved in the trade — the No. 25 selection Thursday and a top-four protected selection from the Golden State Warriors next year (both via Memphis). To net a player who better fits your roster (and might just be better), plus a pair of first-round picks, makes perfect sense from an asset-management standpoint, especially in light of a new collective bargaining agreement.

But assets alone do not win championships. You need competitiveness. You need character. You need grit. You need grind. You need heart, and you need soul, and Smart was Boston's for the past nine seasons.

He arrived as the No. 6 pick in 2014, a bridge between the Kevin Garnett era and the uncertainty that came next. Smart delivered on that promise, never once missing the playoffs. He backed up All-Star point guards Rajon Rondo, Isaiah Thomas and Kemba Walker, started conference finals next to Avery Bradley, Terry Rozier and Kemba Walker, and led the Celtics to the Finals in his first full season as a primary point guard.

Smart shot them out of games and threw passes that made no sense, but far more often he made winning plays. There were Marcus Smart Plays and Marcus Smart Games. You knew them if you saw them. They often came with as many turnovers and missed 3s as steals and assists and always a positive plus/minus.

He twice drew offensive fouls from James Harden to flip an outcome in the final 18.4 seconds during the former Houston Rockets star's MVP season. Leading the timeout-less Philadelphia 76ers by one with 2.4 seconds left in Game 5 of the 2018 Eastern Conference semifinals, Smart tried to miss a free throw, made it unintentionally and covered the court for a series-clinching steal of the ensuing inbounds pass instead.

When the Milwaukee Bucks' Jrue Holiday blocked Smart and picked his pocket on consecutive last-minute possessions to swipe a 3-2 series lead in the 2022 conference semis, the reigning DPOY became the butt of a joke about which defense-first guard was actually better. He responded with 32 points, 17 assists (to just two turnovers) and 12 rebounds over 77:17 of the next two games, finishing a +29 in the two victories.

Smart played in eight Games 7 and won six. He dove on the floor, sat up screaming and kipped-up for more. He was always accountable and held teammates and coaches to the same standard publicly and privately, even when they did not like it, because he gave a s*** — sometimes too much, like when he punched a glass picture frame after a February 2018 loss in Los Angeles and narrowly avoided season-ending surgery on his shooting hand. Smart has been open about his violent and tragic childhood, the cancer that claimed his mother in 2018 and his charitable work to combat both for a new generation.

Smart embodied the Celtics from the green tips of his hair to his custom-made bathrobe bearing the team's name on the front and his No. 36 on the back. Their coach-turned-president of basketball operations, Brad Stevens, once said of Smart, "I love him and I trust him," and that became Boston's rallying cry for years.

We have seen none of this from Porziņģis, who finished one playoff series for the Dallas Mavericks in 2021 and was traded at the next deadline, just before their run to the Western Conference finals. Two more teams dealt Porziņģis to avoid paying him — the New York Knicks before his rookie deal expired and Washington now that an extension is due. In between, he rehabbed his left ACL for 20 months, a torn right meniscus for another five and stood accused of sexual assault in the midst of an alleged extortion plot. The 65 games he played for the 35-win Wizards last season were his most since playing for the 31-win Knicks in 2016-17.

There is the chance a 7-foot-3 center with a history of knee and back problems can stay healthy as Smart's 6-foot-3, 220-pound frame feels the accumulation of all the charges and loose balls that sent his body to the floor. The talent and skills gap between those scenarios could mean the difference between the Celtics falling a few minutes shy of landing consecutive championship punches and delivering a 2024 knockout.

There is also the chance Smart's exit erodes a fragile culture that the Golden State Warriors and Miami Heat exposed the past two years. Boston has seen this firsthand when Danny Ainge dealt Kendrick Perkins at the 2011 deadline and swapped Thomas for Irving in 2017. Both spelled the beginning of the end for two 50-win versions of the Celtics, and each time Smart helped fit the pieces back together into a winner again.

Winning a ring with Smart shepherding the Tatum and Brown era would have meant more to Boston than it will if Porziņģis finishes the job, and it will hurt doubly if Smart wins in Memphis instead. The suddenness of Smart's departure already stings in the wake of news that Brogdon was originally the point guard that would land Porziņģis. The Los Angeles Clippers reportedly balked at Brogdon's medical report in the 11th hour, and in stepped the Grizzlies. Trading Smart was neither the first choice of the Celtics nor their fans.

It is the front office's job to win a title at all costs and decide which course of action it believes is more likely to deliver one. Stevens made his choice before a midnight deadline. The trust in Smart is broken, the love gone, at least from Boston's locker room. It is now up to the players to discover both anew, and that's life.