Marcus Smart, Jared Sullinger

FILE: Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart (36) high-fives teammate Jared Sullinger as they pull ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves late in the second half of an NBA basketball game in Boston, Friday, Dec. 19, 2014. The Celtics defeated the Timberwolves 114-98.

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Open your eyes wide – or even just pay a small bit of attention; that works too – and you will see Boston Celtics rookie Marcus Smart beginning to fill in the outline of his future self. He remains, like all rookies, an amorphous pile of unfulfilled potential. But his development, so important to the franchise's future, is happening every day.

Smart has played on and off the ball all season, which, it should be noted, his defensive versatility allows. But head coach Brad Stevens does not seem to hold doubts about the rookie’s ultimate position.

“I think long term, he’s a point,” Stevens said Wednesday night, without hesitation, before an 89-81 win against the Brooklyn Nets.

For now, though, Smart is learning how to become one. Behind the scenes, the Celtics coaching staff has pushed Smart to develop his penetration skills. Despite his impressive strength, he is drawing only 2.4 free throw attempts per 36 minutes, only a shade more than Phil Pressey. The coaches have put Smart through a load of 2-on-2 and 3-on-3 work, which he says has been to urge “more attacking the basket.”

“Me and Kelly (Olynyk) have been working,” Smart said. “He’s been working on his big defense, containing the guard coming off the ball screen. And I’ve just been working on attacking the big off the ball screen.”

Stevens added: “Part of the reason why he was able to (get into the paint so consistently) in college is because he’s a good basketball player. Part of the reason why is because he’s got a big body. And he can get guys, and keep guys, and get them where they want to go. Well these guys are a little bit bigger. They’re a little bit stronger. When you take it in there, you’re not just going to be able to overpower guys with the rule of verticality, those type of things.

“So there’s an adjustment for him to be the most effective in the paint. And we need him to be a guy who can do things in the paint and get fouled in the paint. That’s a big deal for us. We’ve talked about how we don’t get to the free throw line more than a couple of times a game, it feels like to me. Bottom line is we need to be able to have him do that for us.”

Smart will have nights when he leads glorious surges, when he is diving on the floor and taking charges and knocking down threes from the corner. He will have times when his inability, or unwillingness, to drive will clog the Celtics offense. He will force you to fall in love by boxing out like the rebound means everything in the world or avoiding screens like getting stuck on them could harm his mother. He will throw some turnovers that leave you shaking your head and he will float on the perimeter more often than you would like.

To the chagrin of the “play all the young guys!” crowd, Smart did not replace the traded Rajon Rondo at starting point guard. Smart spent a few games with the first string, but looked unprepared for all of the responsibilities. The Celtics later settled on Evan Turner, never a point guard before, who carries more paint-probing techniques than anyone else on the roster. Smart has played a lot of shooting guard since then, almost always next to a ball-handler.

Wednesday night, though, Marcus Thornton's return pushed Smart back to more point guard than he had played in weeks. He dished three assists, including one beauty to Thornton; committed no turnovers; and provided a solid, albeit unspectacular presence for the offense. The rookie knocked down two of his four 3-point attempts and has been stellar from that range for weeks. One of the biggest doubts about his game entering the NBA was long-distance shooting. But he has actually shot accurately over the last month.

Smart is hitting 43.6 percent from deep since Dec. 8, when he returned from an ankle injury (he played five minutes in an earlier game, but hobbled around so much he went to the D-League for rehab a couple of days later). His season mark is up to 34.3 percent, a solid rate for anyone, especially a first-year pro who A) takes a lot of attempts, and B) was not expected to round into a capable shooter so quickly. Despite a sub-40 field goal percentage, his true shooting percentage (53.1) sits right around the league average.

Not developing as quickly: Smart's ability to probe a defense, to hammer open cracks and passing lanes like all elite point guards do. At 220 pounds, he lived in the paint in college, drawing free throws at an "absurd" rate, as the great DraftExpress profiled. But he also spent less time as a pick-and-roll ball-handler in college than most great point guards. Many opportunities he has with the Celtics, then, are different than the ones he got at Oklahoma State.

Discuss Smart with the Celtics brain trust and you might hear a big name: that of Kyle Lowry, the Toronto Raptors star. It may seem like a lofty comparison – Lowry might be the very best point guard in the Eastern Conference – but before Lowry became an efficient wrecking ball capable of all point guard activities, he was a young pit bull known for toughness and defense more than anything else. Over the years, he added layers to his game until he became the driving force of the NBA’s second-best offense, an absolute killer who deserves more recognition.

Smart has just started to learn. Nobody is saying he will become Lowry, but the Celtics brass know how fiercely he competes. Stevens calls Smart an "energy-giver." They understand he can already defend multiple positions and should be elite on that end for many years to come. Danny Ainge recently called Smart's defensive instincts "ridiculous." Smart's future, then, should be limited or propelled by how he grows offensively.

He remains very much a work in progress at that end, but there is progress to be seen. Smart already shows nice court vision. Every once in a while, he will extend his long right arm, deliver a perfect wraparound pass, and make you wonder what he might become if he learns how to create openings, rather than just react to them. The other day in Chicago, he faked a three, drove past E’Twaun Moore and finished a floater in the paint. Against Charlotte earlier this week, Smart shook Kemba Walker with a hesitation dribble, attacked big man Bismack Biyombo, and shot a controlled pull-up jumper. It hit back rim, but still. The Celtics need their young guard to conjure more and more opportunities close to the rim. For now, his glimpses of offensive creativity are too noticeable because they are too rare.

“I just need to do more of it,” Smart said. “I haven’t been doing a lot of it. I just have to be more aggressive than what I am.”

“I don’t think that’s exactly it,” he said of the thought that he needs to adjust to the bigger, stronger, quicker competition. “I was coming off of an ankle injury, so I wasn’t trying to do too much on it. As I’m healing and getting better, I’m able to do a lot more on the ankle. So I’m trying to get more aggressive with it.”

As Smart discussed his ankle – “It’s still going to always be sore; you’re not really going to be the same for a while,” he said – Olynyk chimed in from a locker away. The big man dealt with his own ankle injury as a rookie and estimates he took three months to recover to full strength.

“It won’t be painful, but it’s just, you don’t have that same push,” Olynyk said. “You don’t have that same pop that you’re used to until you can finally take a little time (off).”

Before Smart’s injury, though, his shot profile looked about the same. About 66 percent of his field goal attempts have been threes. That looks less troublesome as he starts to knock shots down – and learns to avoid the ill-advised tries that hindered his percentages early in the season – but still points to a lack of in-the-paint damage.

At times, ESPN's Amin Elhassan has looked very wise.

“The game in the NBA is creating 'separation by threat' -- either by threat of quickness (which [Smart] doesn't possess), threat of shooting (a major weakness), or threat of strength (his won't be as big an advantage for him on the pro level),” the analyst wrote after the draft. “Further, he isn't polished or experienced enough to be a full-time point guard, so he'll pretty much be learning on the job. There's a lot of speculation that Rajon Rondo is out the door because of this pick, but I don't see how a backcourt of Smart and Avery Bradley (should he be retained) have the creativity to drive and run an offense that isn't even average by NBA standards.”

Smart is growing, though, a process that will come a lot in practice. Stevens has decided not to hand the guard minutes (or a starting role) simply for developmental purposes. No matter what anyone else thinks – half-jokingly, one rival front office figure recently told me he would play Smart “48 minutes per game unless he was getting his head battered to the detriment of future confidence” – the Celtics vow to play whichever lineups give them the best chance to win every night. That means Smart will do some of his in-game learning away from the ball.

“I think that the way we run things, there’s a lot of pick-and-rolls for everybody,” Stevens said, “so he’s able to get in a lot of pick-and-rolls still as a guy playing officially off the ball. He also has the ball a lot as a primary ball-handler; sometimes we’ll play whoever’s playing with him off the ball. So I think he’s getting enough reps at that, but I think it also takes a little bit of the heat off him.”

That’s fair. But how are the Celtics planning to develop Smart so he won’t need any heat taken off?

“I think everything that you can imagine,” Stevens said. “Film of other guys. I thought the last time we played Brooklyn, Jarrett Jack put on a clinic. And he could learn a lot from it, and we talked about it. I think that every day is a talking part with all these guys. But certainly Marcus and James (Young, a fellow rookie), get a lot of extra film work and breakdown work.”

Twenty games into Smart's career, it's easy to see why the Celtics drafted him. He is an agitator, a competitor, a worker, a plus defender at an age when almost nobody is. But he remains incomplete, a young guard very much learning how to command an offense and maximize his physical traits.