Marcus Smart received the dreaded news and instantly spun back to his childhood, to the troubled stage of his life during which he threw rocks at cars, fought classmates daily, and transferred to an alternative school to help control his rage.



The Celtics guard knew he wasn’t traveling to Texas during the final week of the regular season for good news. He had braced himself after receiving a phone call telling him he needed to fly home to see his mother. But nothing could have prepared him for walking into the house he bought her and seeing her in a wheelchair, stretched thin after months of fighting cancer.



Smart had known his 63-year-old mother Camellia was sick. He had visited her in the hospital over the All-Star break, but didn’t learn the diagnosis until last Wednesday. His mother has developed myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of cancer that saps bone marrow’s ability to produce healthy blood cells.



Upon hearing the news,...