Dennis Smith Jr. Is Back from Injury, and N.C. State and the NBA Are Next

Dennis Smith Jr. gave his big man, Texas A&M stretch-four D.J. Hogg, a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Then he was off, blowing past defender Jawun Evans, a speedy Oklahoma State point guard.

Smith took two steps into the lane. Before help defender and Indiana forward Thomas Bryant—an expected future first-round NBA draft pick—could react to protect the rim, Smith took flight, cocking the ball behind his head and violently slamming it through the basket as dozens of professional scouts and personnel looked on.

Attention-grabbing basketball plays aren't uncommon at Adidas Nations, an annual camp held in Garden Grove, California, that features more than 100 top high school and college players. But for Smith, an 18-year-old from Fayetteville, North Carolina, who will play for N.C. State this fall, both the dunk and the effortless explosiveness with which he threw it down had special significance.

Last August at the same camp, Smith drove to the basket and torn the meniscus and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee—a potentially devastating injury for an almost boundlessly athletic six-foot-two point guard considered among the top pro prospects in his high school class.

Exactly 52 weeks later, Smith was announcing, again, his intention to take the basketball world by storm: first with the Wolfpack, and then alongside expected one-and-done 2017 draft lottery selections like incoming Kansas forward Josh Jackson and incoming Duke forward Harry Giles.

"I knew it was bad as soon as I went down because I heard it pop," Smith told VICE Sports, recalling his injury. "I'd never felt anything like that before. But I just tried to tell the guys that I hyperextended it because we had a championship game next, and I wanted to play in that.

"I tried to get up and walk but I couldn't do it. I couldn't put any pressure on it. So they carried me over. When I get to the training table, they start doing my palpation test and I'm telling them that I just straightened it out of step like I had hyperextended it. I just tried to get over with it, but they knew it was something serious when they did the test."

After receiving his diagnosis last summer, Smith reportedly cried in his hospital bed. Luckily for him, torn knee ligaments aren't the career-ending threats they used to be. Plenty of young, talented players—many of them point guards—have come back from ACL injuries.

Kyle Lowry tore his ACL at Villanova, and last season was best player on a 56-win Toronto Raptors team. Baron Davis tore his during his freshman year at UCLA, and later became a NBA All-Star. Minnesota Timberwolves guard Ricky Rubio has recovered fully from his own tear. NBA guard Lou Williams was 26 when he tore his ACL in 2013; two years later, he won the league's Sixth Man of the Year Award.

Because only four or five NBA players tear their ACLs per season, it's hard to know the precise odds of a full (or mostly full) recovery. However, there are enough success stories to give anyone going through the surgery and rehabilitation process hope.

Smith joined that group last year, and doctors gave him a ten-month recovery plan. Smith did everything that was asked of him. A little less than eight months in, he said, his leg was feeling stable enough to begin playing again—and not just shooting around. "I'm talking back to playing basketball," Smith said.

For Smith, "playing basketball" means dizzying quickness and vertical exploits. He is very fast, and can really, really jump. His comeback performance at Adidas Nations gave every indication that his injury has done nothing to change that. Playing with a group of college basketball's top returning talents, Smith was able to zigzag around and through defenders with ease. He created plays whenever he wanted in half-court settings, utilizing his advanced pick-and-roll understanding to get all the way to the rim by himself, or drop off little pocket passes to teammates.

While Smith says that you "can't practice" having impressive basketball IQ, he does say that he watches a lot of tape on NBA standouts like Chauncey Billups and Chris Paul. It shows: the way that Smith consistently squares his shoulders to the basket on drives while keeping defenders glued to his hips to protect the ball is reminiscent of the Los Angeles Clippers guard.

Comparing a player who has yet to put on a college uniform to a future Hall of Famer may seem like lofty praise, but Smith's play in Southern California was good enough to put him back into what should be a furious contest to be the first guard taken in the 2017 NBA draft. Washington-bound Markelle Fultz, UCLA's Lonzo Ball, Kentucky point guard De'Aaron Fox, and France's Frank Ntilikina are the other prospects battling for that honor, and all of them will be 19 or younger on draft day next year.

How good is the group? Had any of them been eligible for this summer's draft, they likely would have been the first point guard taken. Fultz is a creative combo scoring guard, Ball a big playmaker, and Fox a two-way dynamo. Ntilikina is a six-foot-five athletic passser who will look to prove himself at the highest levels of European basketball next season.

Smith differentiates himself as the best athlete of the bunch, and possibly the best overall offensive player due to his ability to both get his own shot and create plays for others. On defense, he's a terror in passing lanes, and creates a lot of fast-break opportunities that he often finishes above the rim. While Smith may not have the traditional outsized physical attributes of a high draft pick—he stands only six-foot-two, according to DraftExpress, with a six-foot-three wingspan—there's an argument to be made that, when healthy, he's the most complete player of the five.

Of course, the 2017 NBA draft is nearly 11 months away—and as Smith knows, a lot can happen in a year's time. Asked about the draft, he said that he has "four years of [college] eligibility." Technically speaking, that's true. Wolfpack fans surely would love to have Smith for that long. So would NC State coach Mark Gottfried, who sealed his recruitment of Smith by visiting his high school via helicopter. After Smith's return performance at Adidas Nations, though, they probably shouldn't count on it. The high-flying guard appears to be all the way back, and still heading up.

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