Basketball is a universal language. And when the dialect is introduced by a team like the Larry Bird-led Boston Celtics of the 1980s, it turns a fun viewing experience into a lifestyle. For Bridgewater, Massachusetts-raised Keith Smith, that’s exactly what happened.
“It was impossible for anybody not to fall in love with basketball in that time,” Smith said. “So, for me, I ended up really loving the game, and it was my favorite thing in the world.”
The Spotrac writer, NBA Front Office Show host, and salary cap expert has amassed over 140,000 Twitter followers thanks to his basketball brain. But NBA coverage was never the plan.
Smith began his professional journey working for Disney — a fruitful experience that later aided the NBA in completing the 2020 season in the Orlando bubble — when his family was uprooted to California in 2007. It was then that he turned his passion for hoops into a much-needed sense of community.
“All of a sudden, all of my friends and everybody were gone,” Smith said. “I didn’t know anybody there except for my wife. So, I turned to get my basketball fix on RealGM and their message boards.”
RealGM helped Smith find like-minded people. “Cap nerds,” he called them. He began writing long-winded posts on their message boards. “Really way too long posts nobody should ever have read the entirety of,” Smith said with a laugh.
His posts were quickly noticed by RealGM, leading to an offer to work with them on cap stuff behind the scenes.
The Athletic’s Shams Charania was with RealGM at the time, but a couple of years into Smith’s stint there, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski recruited him to work at Yahoo. The two biggest news-breakers in the game today teamed up, and it led to Smith’s first real writing opportunity, one that he never went searching for.
“They were like, ‘Would you be interested in writing?’” Smith recalled. “And I was really like, ‘I haven’t written anything, other than these ridiculous message board posts, since college. And the editor there, a guy named Chris Reina, who’s incredible, was like, ‘It’s fine. I’ll get you there. Just do what you do, and I’ll edit your pieces, and we’ll work together.”
Thus began Smith’s dive into the world of NBA coverage. It started with straightforward posts, general hoops stuff. “But there was always a Celtic slant,” Smith remembered.
As Twitter began to take off, Smith found a new home for his basketball obsession. And, in turn, a new place to make connections. This time, with people who shared his green glasses.
“That’s where more people started to notice me in the Celticsphere,” Smith said. “And that’s where I crossed paths with Kevin [O’Connor] and Jared [Weiss] and a few other guys.”
Boston was swept up in offseason buzz back in 2016. Visions of Russell Westbrook and Blake Griffin swirled around Celtics Nation as Danny Ainge and Isaiah Thomas were spotted in San Diego that summer. Rumor season was in full force, and it spawned Smith’s close friendships with his new Celtics buddies.
It wasn’t long before these relationships turned into a chance to write about his favorite team. O’Connor was getting ready to depart SB Nation’s CelticsBlog, leaving room for Smith to step in.
A chance to cover the Celtics was the last straw, and Smith’s once hobby snowballed into a second full-time job.
“I was using all my vacation time at work to go to Summer League and to take off trade deadline week and draft week and the start a free agency, so that way I wouldn’t miss anything,” said Smith.
Smith was doing radio hits in his office at Disney under the guise of a “conference call.” It was rapidly becoming clear that basketball was no longer just a side hustle.
Around March of 2020, Smith finally decided to make the jump. With CelticsBlog and his other freelance gigs, he left a 20-year career at Disney to cover basketball full-time.
The key phrase there is “around March of 2020.”
With a 20-year career in his rearview mirror, Smith was staring down a new phase of his life interrupted by a worldwide pandemic. No one could have predicted it, but Smith was forced to face it head-on.
As he attempted to juggle his new career, only one place was a mainstay.
“I will say I am forever thankful to SB Nation and the CelticsBlog guys,” Smith said. “Because they really were the one place that kept me on the entirety of the pandemic.”
With no games to cover, Smith and CelticsBlog got funky. Smith detailed his unconventional path to becoming a writer, and he even had his dad rank his top-10 favorite Celtics of all time.
Smith’s love for the Celtics grew into a devotion to covering them. CelticsBlog provided him with the platform. More importantly, it gave him complete autonomy over what he wanted to write about — a management style that has helped cultivate an amazing culture at CelticsBlog over the years.
“So, it was like, ‘Hey, I want to write 1000 words on Marcus George-Hunt,’ who’s really just here on a summer contract and a training camp deal, and they were always like, ‘Go. Go crazy with that,’” Smith said.
Write-ups on Georges-Hunt turned into deep dives into Boston’s defense. Smith wrote an analysis on the Celtics’ decade-long run of being one of the best three-point defenses in the league.
“That ended up being a piece that got a lot of play nationally, which was a lot of fun for me,” said Smith.
Before long, Smith started his series of “10 Takeaways,” which he would post after every Celtics game. The idea started in 2017 as Thomas’ Celtics made a run to the Eastern Conference Finals.
It helped him focus more on the on-the-court action rather than cap sheets and numbers.
“I wrote a thing about facilitating pick-and-roll with Isaiah Thomas out closer to the half-court circle than it was to the top of the arc,” Smith said. “And it was giving him more room to get downhill and attack. And people really loved it.”
The peak of his takeaway game came during the Celtics’ 2022 run to the NBA Finals. It was the culmination of his hobby-turned-job. A lifelong love for the Celtics trickling over into the career he had created for himself.
“Those were awesome,” Smith remembered. “Writing the Celtics-Warriors Finals preview was just so cool. Because it was like, ‘Man, I’m doing it. I’m actually here.’”
The fan and writer in him were fused into one.
“I remember that game [Game 1] ended,” Smith recalled. “They had the crazy comeback and barrage of threes and won that game. And I remember sitting down, looking at the document, and being so deliriously happy that they won.”
The usual 60 notes he would take after each game doubled as the excitement of watching Boston play in the Finals flowed through him.
Smith’s 10 Takeaways spiraled into one of the most popular series at CelticsBlog, but they also turned into a reminder of what’s really important.
Bostonians obsess over Celtics basketball almost as much as they need air to breathe. They get hooked on each and every game. They’re ready to run through a wall when Boston wins and pick them apart at the slightest failure.
Smith’s Takeaways helped provide some perspective.
“Unfortunately, our beloved golden retrievers passed away. Both times on game days,” Smith said. “And I didn’t really want to write about the game, so I wrote about the dogs instead, in the Takeaways.”
As Smith wrote about his loss, any thought of basketball or the Celtics went out the window. It simply didn’t matter in that moment.
“The one about the second one, about Matty, who was my specific dog. I got him when he was a puppy. That’s probably still the most read thing I’ve ever written on the site,” Smith said. “And it’s definitely the most commented thing. Still, people will find it and send me emails.”
At the time (December of 2021), the direction of the Celtics was unclear. Boston was fresh off an ugly season capped by a first-round exit, they were hovering around .500, and questions about the true ceiling of a Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown-led squad loomed large.
But while fans may allow sports to dictate their emotions, nothing trumps family. For Smith, Matty was family. And for so many others, that hit home.
“My least favorite thing to write, but the best thing I ever wrote, was the Takeaways about Matty, my dog,” Smith said. “Just because of the way that resonated with people. And it was at a time, too, where the team was good, but they were like, ‘are they gonna be good enough?’”
“And a couple of people were like, ‘you know, at the end, it doesn’t matter.’ We all need to take a moment out. I wish I never had to write it, but it ended up being one of my favorite things I’ve written.”
CelticsBlog is a site that covers the Celtics. The ins and outs of the game. The fun storylines surrounding the players. Deep-dives into specific plays and light-hearted articles about funny topics. But it’s so much more than that for those who work there.
“It’s funny, we talked about the Takeaways. That’s my single biggest takeaway for me, is those relationships,” Smith said. “And these are now lifelong relationships and friendships. That, no matter what we all go on to do, those people.”
From Jeff Clark, the founder of CelticsBlog, to Bill Sy, CelticsBlog’s editor extraordinaire, to Adam Taylor, CelticsBlog’s resident Xs and Os expert who has taken over the Takeaways, Smith has made friendships that stretch beyond the confines of Celtics Nation.
On the outside, it’s just a website. Names in bylines and the content below. But with commenters ready to share their opinions, a Slack group supercharged with constant communication, and a whole city of hungry readers, CelticsBlog is a community.
So, when it was time for Smith to leave CelticsBlog at the end of the 2022-23 season, it was far less malicious than the pessimistic masses tried to make it.
“It’s funny. I always think people want to make up some drama about why things end, and sometimes they just end,” Smith said. “It’s so funny. Nothing bad happened. I wasn’t unhappy. I would have continued doing it forever. I just, I no longer had time to do it the right way.”
Smith left CelticsBlog not because he wanted to but because he felt it was the right thing to do. With his podcast, The NBA Front Office Show, constantly growing, and his work at Spotrac taking center stage, he felt it was time to move on.
Rather than putting in half the effort to cover his favorite team, he stepped back into the role of a fan, leaving room for others to shine.
“Part of the reason why I stepped away was, we have people who are ready to do this better than I can from Orlando,” Smith said. “They’re just more ready to jump in and do more of the true day-to-day-type coverage of the team like this.”
Smith’s time at CelticsBlog, and on Twitter, is defined by dedication, a love for the game, and perhaps an occasional online argument here and there.
“The kid who grew up just south of Boston. I lived in Boston for a long time. I love a fight,” Smith said. “Give me a good argument, and I’m in. I am more than happy to dive in and fight and argue with people. It’s just, I mean, that’s part I think how we grow up. We all grow up ready to scrap.”
But the same people who got into it with him online undoubtedly share that same mindset. It comes with the territory of being from Massachusetts.
At his core, Smith is a Celtics fan. That’s how everyone starts. One sweep of the Celtics beat will uncover a hoard of fans-turned-reporters. Biases are put aside for the sake of the job, but everyone grew up bleeding green.
“I don’t know anybody who has been working for the site [who wasn’t a fan first],” Smith said. “Even if some of us did turn it into, ‘Alright, I can’t be as rampant a homer as I was before. Painting my walls green and going crazy about everything I do.’ We still love the team. That’s the end of the end of it. We’re still fans first. I don’t know anybody who’s working there just as like, ‘Hey, I got hired to do this.’ Everybody stepped in as a fan.”
CelticsBlog provides a place for everything.
There are reporters at every game, articles detailing NBC Boston’s Brian Scalabrine’s obsession with the 2-for-1, one-on-one interviews with players, and in-depth film breakdowns all the same. It’s an unusual dichotomy of content that isn’t found anywhere else. And that’s what makes it so special.
“When we have the ability to go somewhere and the site be everything, and you can be as rampant a homer as you want to be or you can be as technical and unemotional about it as you can be. That’s so cool,” Smith said.
Smith still hovers around. Every once in a while, his name will pop up on the site for a guest column. He’s still a Celtics fan, at the end of the day.
So, as CelticsBlog celebrates its 20-year anniversary, Smith is a reminder of all the great qualities of the site. The power to turn a fan into a reporter. The freedom to let creativity cross paths with serious coverage. A reminder of the more important things in life.
And most of all, a place for Celtics fanatics to find each other.
