Situationally Speaking, I'm Not Sure Giving A Fan The Finger Was The Right Way For Marcus Smart To Handle A Heckler

□ Marcus Smart with the □ bird flip to a fan after missing a jumper #Celtics pic.twitter.com/BVTuMUwq2M

— The Fanatics View (@thefanaticsview) April 19, 2017

I know this may surprise some people, but the use of the middle finger does not offend me. Honestly, if church was a place that I frequented then you could walk right up to me in my pew and flip me off during the "stand and greet" period that I used to loathe so much as child, and I would probably respond with nothing more than a chuckle. I'm not saying professional athletes should be flashing derogatory sign language toward the crowd while competing on national television, but I certainly can't get riled up about it and I question what type dead animal is in the rectum of anyone that can. Even those that want to go the "what about the kids?!" route don't have much of a leg to stand on, because if you can't teach/lie to your children then you're a worse parent than Marcus Smart is a role model.

That being said, I'm not sure the bird flinger in question has the greatest sense of timing here. Standing in the center of the floor after missing yet another open jump shot en route to yet another futile effort to protect your home court as the #1 seed is probably not the moment you'd want to choose to draw negative attention to yourself. It's not so much the appropriateness of the response to the heckler that I see as an issue, but the mood of those in attendance at the time. The fact that Boston fans don't take kindly to underperformance is likely what spurned this whole interaction in the first place, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that implying that one of them should go fuck himself isn't going to ease too many tensions. After all, the C's are halfway to getting bounced by a team that was so hopeless that they were willing to trade them the star player that is now leading the charge in beating their ass. To put it far too lightly, 'Celtic Pride' is currently running on 'E' so it's probably Smart-er to refrain from given the old "fuck you" to the people that will be pushing the bandwagon if it completely breaks down.