BOSTON – With the eyes of a cobra, he slithered through the lane.
The predators closed in on him, trapped in the middle of the killing field. Death was imminent. Failure was certain.
Then Marcus Smart struck. Not with a jumper or a floater or a run at the rim, but with a crisp pass to the weak side corner. Jae Crowder caught the ball on his hip, pulled up and fired away, singeing the net on its way through.
There’s been a seismic shift in the way the Cobra functions with the ball this season, progressively improving as the season drags on.