Marcus Smart ejected for low blow on Matt Bonner

Marcus Smart was ejected with a Flagrant 2 foul for hitting Matt Bonner below the belt while trying to fight through a screen. Here's what Smart said about the play.

Marcus Smart of Boston Celtics ejected for low blow vs. Matt Bonner of San Antonio Spurs - ESPN Boston

After the game, Smart told reporters the strike was a "freak accident" and suggested he was just trying to fight through the screen. "Like every other play, I was trying to get through a screen," Smart told reporters. "[Aron Baynes] screened me, [Bonner] tried to clean up the screen and I tried to fight through. He had his arms up high -- locked arms -- and my body, the way [Baynes] hit me threw my body back, so it forced all my momentum to come forward, and [Bonner] just happened to jump in the way as I was trying to rip through and rip up, and he got caught. "Like I told him, I wasn't trying to intentionally do it, because if I was, obviously he wouldn't have come at me the way he did. It was just something that was just a freak accident -- inadvertent arm that happened to connect."

I can maybe buy that explanation but it doesn't sound like Brad Stevens buys it.

Stevens on Smart's Flagrant 2 ejection: "From my standpoint, it looks like an unacceptable play. You can't do that."

— Boston Celtics (@celtics) March 21, 2015

Regardless, it isn't a great moment in the young man's career and the perception of this certainly won't help his reputation as a less-than-level-headed player (due mostly to an incident with a fan in college). Certainly if he does anything else that even looks bad, these incidents will be brought up again as a pattern of poor decision making behavior.

Hopefully that's not the case and all this will be forgotten about (kind of like how nobody talks about how Chris Paul punched a guy below the belt in college).