Dennis Smith Jr. recently made an appearance on Udonis Haslem’s The OGs podcast. During the ‘Fan Questions’ segment of the podcast, the 27-year-old was asked to “Rank Top 5 PGs” he ever played against at any level. DSJ named a solid top five, but he snubbed some of the best PGs in the league today, including Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
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Since the question stated that he could name any player from any level, the Wisconsin Herd star started in high school. Smith stated that Tyler Ulis, a former NBA star and current assistant coach for the Arkansas Razorbacks men’s basketball team, was one of the best PGs he ever faced.
He said, “You couldn’t get by him. You couldn’t take the ball from him. He gon’ make every shot, every floater and he’s so in control.”
After a surprising start, DSJ named Warriors superstar Stephen Curry on his list of toughest point guards. He included James Harden in there as well, but only the Houston Rockets version of him.
DSJ then added OKC’s Russell Westbrook and Kyrie Irving to the list. But unfortunately, he didn’t give a nod to his former teammate, Luka Doncic and last year’s MVP runner up, SGA. While many may say that Luka and Shai are better guards than some of the names on the list, we have to take into account that the former Mavs star might have a different outlook on guards as an undersized PG himself.
Therefore, he probably seemed more inclined to taking relatively shorter guards like Westbrook, Kyrie and Curry. It doesn’t mean that the former NBA star wants to undermine the two MVP candidates.
DSJ has always said great things about Luka. In fact, the 27-year-old was a fan of the five-time All-Star even before he was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks. Now he believes that the Slovenian is the best player in the world.
Luka Doncic turned out to be better than Dennis Smith Jr. expected
Luka had a lot of hype around his name in 2018, the year of his draft. However, he was yet to be tested in the league. Despite that, DSJ was confident that the Slovenian would be a perfect fit for the league.
On the Run Your Race podcast, he had said, “I knew he was nice as hell. I didn’t know he was gonna be… I mean, I kind of did… I was always telling people, ‘he’s cold.’”
Jackson revealed that he had eyes on three players and he wanted the Mavs to sign them.
He said, “They acted like I had some kind of input on the draft… I was like, ‘I like Luka, I like Jaren Jackson and I’d say Mo Bamba. Those are the three people that I like. But he [Doncic] damn-near best player in the world… I ain’t know he was going to be this cold. I knew he was going to be special, but he otherworldly.”
He said such nice things about Luka just last month. It’s unlikely that he’d snub the Mavs guard from his list if he didn’t have to.
