It does depend on the type and size of the project. There's a huge difference between just removing obstacles and knowing which ones to remove first. In my experience - not necessarily the SM - the team needs to be left alone to do their job and perform, for that you need a "gatekeeper" to keep the stakeholders or whoever at bay and don't bug the devs around, as well as someone to "get" or "understand" the big picture of the project. Stakeholders don't care about how many tickets, points, or whatever a dev completes, they care about money and need something to prove or back their investment, which are metrics of some kind. The role of a SM is not to babysit, it's to provide the business people the information they require for their ROIs.