How Ex-Celtic Marcus Smart ‘Humbled’ Rays Pitcher In Basketball

Marcus Smart has done plenty for the city of Boston, but the now-Grizzlies guard apparently lent an unintentional helping hand to a Major League Baseball pitcher, too.

Back in Smart’s pre-NBA days while attending Edward S. Marcus High School in Texas, Rays pitcher Colin Poche shared the court with the former Celtics guard. As teammates, Smart excelled, finishing as a McDonald’s All-American before heading off to play college basketball at Oklahoma State. And it was at that time that Poche learned an important lesson, getting a beneficial reality check, which he credits to Smart.

In the end, the left-hander hurler wasn’t destined to play basketball.

“Our basketball team in high school was pretty good. We had Marcus Smart who plays in the NBA, quite a few guys go play D-1,” Poche told Rays Radio on Wednesday. “… So I got humbled pretty quickly playing basketball, and I started to grow and just being left-handed, I started to get better at baseball. And I think baseball was always the sport that I probably loved the most and so that was kind of where my passion was at, and really the only real possibility of playing a sport at the next level was baseball.”

Poche isn’t the first and definitely won’t be the last to get humbled by Smart, who in 2022 was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

The 29-year-old Poche has become a key arm in Tampa Bay’s bullpen, going 11-3 this season with a career-best 2.19 ERA in 59 relief appearances. That’s placed Poche as one of the most elite reliever arms in baseball today — which has translated to the Rays’ current success.

Tampa Bay, sitting second in the American League East, is due for another playoff hunt, which would mark the second of Poche’s big league career.

It’s likely Poche doesn’t (and won’t) have any regrets about how his career path unfolded.