“Reggie Miller gave me the quietest 30-piece anyone ever gave me!”: JR Smith recounts how the 39-year-old Pacers legend schooled him with 36 points as a rookie

Before Stephen Curry made coming off screens an MVP-caliber move, Reggie Miller was the first to use them at a breakneck pace.

Reggie Miller was the first of his kind – a lightweight shooting guard whose primary job was to score. He only ever had a gangling frame and never put on weight like other All-Stars of his ilk.

But what he contributed to the culture of basketball goes beyond numbers and wins. Indiana is absolutely one of the basketball factions in the country and Reggie Miller was its life-breath.

His Pacers teams made a ton of deep playoff runs during the 1990s. But much like Patrick Ewing’s Knicks and Charles Barkley’s Sixers, Miller and his Pacers were thwarted by one Michael Jordan.

Reggie Miller did not have a legendary peak unlike a lot of Hall of Famers. But what he did have was unerring consistency. The Pacers legend was good for over 2.5 winshares for every single season of his career.

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JR Smith reveals that Reggie Miller was the first NBA player to bust his a** on the Knuckleheads Pod

JR Smith was a guest on the Knuckleheads Podcast a couple of years back. The mercurial 2012-13 NBA Sixth Man of the Year was promptly asked by Darius Miles about the first NBA player to bust him up. JR’s answer was emphatic:

“Reggie Miller. He and them Davis boys got me bad. Man, I was 18 years old. First of all, I played the whole preseason, I was there in the starting lineup. Me and BD in New Orleans, we were cooking.”

“Then, I ain’t played in the next 2-and-a-half months behind David Wesley and George Lynch. They traded David Wesley after the All-Star Break, and the first game, I had Reggie.”

“Dawg, he went for like 36, 37. All that trade stuff. And you know I couldn’t touch him, running this way, slinging everything. And then I’m running into that Davis boy over there, setting them big-a** screens. I’m like ‘Man!'”

“That was the quietest 30-piece I’ve ever gotten, dawg!”

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Tales like this serve to illustrate how the NBA adapts and evolves from generation to generation. While JR may not have been the player prime Reggie Miller was, he doubtless learned a ton simply by being at the receiving end of a maestro’s best.