J.R. Smith has had one of the most interesting NBA careers of recent times. He went straight to the NBA from high school and played on the Hornets team that called Oklahoma City home for a year when Hurricane Katrina forced them to relocate. He won a Sixth Man of the Year award with the Knicks while on his second tour of duty with Carmelo Anthony, and he later helped LeBron James and Kyrie Irving deliver Cleveland its only NBA title.
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Smith has been memed to death for his sometimes erratic play (never more than when he forgot the score in Game 1 of the 2018 Finals), but whatever the reason, he was always an exciting player to watch.
The former Knick made his long-awaited appearance on the 7PM in Brooklyn podcast recently, and it was a great episode as he and Melo talked shop and reminisced over old times. Smith made a thought-provoking point that the modern NBA owes a lot to him because of the way he could make difficult threes look easy (even before Steph Curry and Damian Lillard made it cool to launch from the logo).
He was sometimes labeled as a streaky shooter during his career, but Melo thought that characterization didn’t fit at all. “Lu Dort is a streaky shooter. That’s no disrespect, but he’s a streaky shooter. Somebody who may hit his shot here, who may get hot in a game here, that’s considered a streaky shooter.”
Melo gestured to Smith and said, “This man is a volume shooter.”
Calling out Dort was a bit of a stray here, but it comes at a time when he’s proving Melo right. The OKC guard has vastly improved his outside shot these last two years, shooting 39.4% and 41.2% in the regular season. He’s on a prolonged cold streak in the playoffs, though, shooting just over 25% through eight postseason games.
Carmelo Anthony will always defend J.R. Smith
Smith played in China during the NBA lockout in 2011, and his career nearly took a very different trajectory from there. Kobe Bryant and Chris Paul both reached out to him to recruit him to their respective L.A. teams (the Lakers and the Clippers), but after Melo got a tip from agent Leon Rose, he reached out and engineered a reunion with Smith on the Knicks.
Melo and Smith had already played together in Denver, so when Smith got the call from his former running mate, that was all it took to seal the deal. Those Knicks teams were some of the most fun that Madison Square Garden has seen, and they reached the Eastern Conference semis in 2013 for the first time in 13 years.
Another prolonged drought for the franchise occurred after that, as the Knicks didn’t win another playoff series until 2023. Now they’ve reached the second round three years in a row and are currently ahead of the Boston Celtics 2-1 with Game 4 on tap tonight. Let’s just say that Smith has liked what he’s seen so far.
