Marcus Smart says the Boston Celtics’ blowup in the locker room earlier in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals has made the team mature and come together. He also admits it “needed to happen.”

Smart and Jaylen Brown reportedly got into a heated argument following Boston’s second straight collapse in two losses to the Miami Heat to open the series, but a meeting between the team’s stars and coach Brad Stevens after the altercation helped smooth things over ahead of a 117-106 win in Game 3 on Saturday.

“We were all disappointed. It was just disappointing,” Smart said in an interview Monday with The Athletic. “We lost two games that we should have won, and nobody was happy. I probably would have felt in trouble with the team as a team — like, we would’ve felt in trouble — if everybody was calm.

“After a Game 2 loss, up 17 (points), up 14, two games, and we lost it. We’re a great team and we’re playing against a great team, so we know we can’t have those types of meltdowns. So yeah, we were all disappointed. And when you’ve got a bunch of brothers who are disappointed, emotions fly and sometimes you’ve got to yell just to get it out and move on. It was one of those nights.”

Stevens held a late-night meeting at the team hotel in the Orlando bubble with Smart, Brown, Jayson Tatum and Kemba Walker following the Game 2 loss last Thursday, and they declared they “love each other,” Smart said.

“That was big for us to make sure that we didn’t let this flow over, because it happens,” he said “And I’m sure this isn’t going to be our last time having a discussion, having a debate, or even getting emotionally invested and releasing that emotion.

“We’ve heard the cliché, ‘It’s not about getting knocked down, it’s about what you do after you get knocked down.’ We were knocked down. A lot of guys had to stand back up, dust ourselves up, put up our dukes and get ready to fight again…That’s why I said that we’ve grown with this experience. We’ve grown. We’ve matured. It would have been easy, and would have been understandable in some ways after that, for us to fall apart.”

Instead, the Celtics will look to even the series Wednesday in Game 4.

“It’s unfortunate that it got out, but it happened,” Smart said. “Like I said, we’re a family. Families fight. I don’t expect anything less. I expect that if a guy feels some way, then say it. I’d rather you say it than hold it in and let it come out too late.

“Like I said, it was electrifying for us to have it. It was something that probably we should have had a long time ago, but because we kind of just skated through we didn’t have to. And we knew eventually it was going to come up to bite us with the way we’d been playing, so it was something that needed to happen.”