PHILADELPHIA – There was one key difference between Marcus Smart in Game 2 and Marcus Smart in Game 1, and it wasn’t his shooting.
It was the splint on his right thumb.
Smart shot just 3-for-12 during Game 1, and two days later while speaking to the media, he revealed that the splint he had worn on his surgically-repaired thumb had been causing heavy discomfort.
“The one last game was really digging into my thumb,” he said before Wednesday’s practice, “and it was causing me to not catch the ball the way I wanted to or get a grip on it and things like that.