J.R. Smith Is Fun Again

Allen Iverson never completely got out of his own way, and that's what made him beautiful. "I don't know how to play basketball the right way like Larry Brown say," Iverson told Stephen A. Smith in 2005, during a 45-minute interview that amounts to the most eloquent summation of his style. "Not every game. Sometimes, you know, I'm gonna explore myself, my game. I'm gonna do something. I'm gonna try something."

It was this trying of shit that lent Iverson his spectacularity, and also what sunk him in certain respects. A good number of the criticisms leveled at him over his career were irrelevant and smacked of salt, but it's a fact that he often lapsed into ballhoggery. He could be selfish and hard-headed. He was no stranger to hilariously bad shooting nights. He thought the best way to help his teams win was to find the limits of his abilities. History asserts he was only half-right about this, that he could have stood to pass the ball more. But this is pure hypothetical. Had he been a more deferential player, he wouldn't have been Allen Iverson.

J.R. Smith has a little A.I. in him, which is something to cherish, especially in an age when gunning guards are considerably rarer than they were in the late 90s. Smith isn't an utter anachronism: his jumper is smoother than Iverson's ever was, and even at his overconfident peak, he never took anything close to 25 shots per game. A.I. was an era-defining star; Smith has some star quality to him, but he's done his best work as a role player.

The link between the two players lies in their self-belief more than anywhere else. When J.R. is rolling, there is a god, I'm so fucking good vibe about him that's undeniable and intoxicating. There are players better, but no one feels themselves harder, no one celebrates cooler. And no one is a surer bet to take an against-all-reason 24-footer after they've made a few shots in a row. J.R. senses, when he's in a groove, that he might never fall out of it, like just maybe this is the game he finishes on a 28-for-28 streak. He's proof the hot hand theory is both mental and actual.

There's a dark side to this. When J.R. is bored, he can ball solipsistically, which is to say he jacks up shots just for the hell of it, to see if he can make them. There have been stretches in Denver and New York where watching a Nuggets or Knicks game meant suffering through Smith treating an NBA arena as his own personal practice gym. He cries out for structure and purpose. Without them, his game is masturbatory.

After a listless couple of seasons in New York, Smith has found his focus again in Cleveland, on a team with legitimate title ambitions. Brian Windhorst recently said on Bill Simmons's podcast that when the Cavs were looking to acquire Iman Shumpert in January, the Knicks insisted they take on Smith as a sort of Shump tax. While Cleveland's management was mulling the offer, they ran it by LeBron. He reportedly said something to the effect of you guys have it backwards. Get J.R. If you can get Shumpert, too, that's great.

For all of General Manager LeBron's shortcomings, he was completely right about Smith, who has fit into the Cavaliers offense perfectly. In most lineups, he's the third or fourth option, spacing the floor by spotting up in the corner or on the wing. He's taking a tick over seven three-pointers per game since arriving in Cleveland, and he goes entire games without scoring from inside the arc. To coin a would-be Clyde Frazierism, he has found liberation in limitation. Because he's not exclusively a catch-and-shoot player, J.R. can freelance some when he hears the NBA Jam announcer in his soul calling his name, mixing in a baseline pull-up here, an obscenely deep three there. Once he clanks a couple, he goes back to playing within himself. He's also flashing his better-than-you-remember passing skills now that he has better teammates than he ever did in New York.

In short, J.R. Smith is fun again. He's engaged; he's entrenched in a system that allows him to express himself without asking him to score 20 points each night. Let it never be said that J.R. got his swagger back—he never lost it for a moment, and even in his most depressing, bombingest seasons, he has oozed confidence. But his swagger has been recontextualized. It's ebulliently displayed.

The last time Smith featured for a squad that had even an outside shot at a championship was 2009, in Denver. Coincidentally, a very nearly washed up Allen Iverson played three games for the Nuggets that season before he was sent to Detroit in a swap for Chauncey Billups. J.R. was a 23-year-old sixth man on that team and had what still might be his finest year: 15.2 points, 2.8 assists, 44.6 percent from the field, 39.7 percent from three. He had himself a Smithishly effective playoffs, too, generally shooting pretty well, and mixing in a few great performances with a few godawful ones.

Those Nuggets feel ancient now—remember Cornrowed Melo?—but J.R. is somehow still just 29. He's packed a lot of life into the intervening years, both on the court and off it. There is no narrative here about how he has matured or grown, though perhaps he has, in his way. The headline is that Smith is bringing his party and bullshit, Iversonian, best-rapper-alive steez to yet another deep playoff run. It's been too long.