In China, Josh Smith is free to jack threes as he pleases, and it's spectacular

Throughout his career, the knock on Josh Smith was his shot selection. Over his last six seasons in the NBA, he attempted 2.5 three-pointers per game, despite a sub-30 percent success rate — well below average. Not only that, but Smith also took another four shots from mid-range, where he consistently ranked among the league’s least efficient shooters in an area that’s already inefficient for everyone.

In the midst of Smith’s career, NBA teams realized, Hey, three points counts more than two, and long two-pointers are the least effective way to score, so let’s shoot more threes and layups than jumpers. Case in point: The last NBA team to employ Smith, the Houston Rockets, leads the league with 36.9 three-point tries per game — a dozen more than the league leader when he was a rookie in 2003-04.

So, Smith started getting squeezed out of the league. So much so that the Detroit Pistons were willing to pay the man $5.3 million per season through 2020 for the right to cut him loose in December 2014.

All this led Smith to China, where he signed a $1.5 million deal to spend the next three months with the defending Chinese Basketball Association champion Sichuan Whales. Unfettered from any advanced analytical NBA construct, Smith is now free to be the player Smith wants to be, and in his second game with the Whales, we got as good a glimpse as we’ll ever get of unadulterated J-Smoove.

Smith attempted 18 three-pointers in the contest, and the results were … absolutely spectacular?

First, let’s put those 18 threes into proper perspective. According to RealGM.com, more than half (70) of the Chinese Basketball Association’s 139 players haven’t attempted 18 threes for the year — seven games into their season. Former NBA player Lester Hudson leads the CBA with 15.7 three-point shots per game, and even a prolific shooter like Jimmer Fredette only attempts 10.4 threes a game in China.

Back home, two-time reigning MVP Stephen Curry leads the NBA with 10 triples taken a night, and nobody else attempts more than nine per game. According to Basketball Reference, in the history of the NBA, a player has attempted 18 or more 3’s in a single game on just 14 occasions. For the record, Smith is not one of them. (Although, as you might have guessed, J.R. Smith is on that list — twice.)

So, either way you slice it, 18 three-pointers is a lot of three-pointers to take in one night. And here’s the best part: Smith made seven of them — a respectable rate of 38.9 percent. Smith shot better than 38 percent or better in fewer than a quarter of his 772 career NBA games. The 30-year-old only shot nine or more threes in a game four times in his NBA career, and never made more than three of them.

The result for Smith on Wednesday night was 41 points (on 14-of-27 shooting overall), 19 rebounds, five blocks and, predictably for someone who fired 18 triples in 35:32 off the bench, just one assist — a pretty spectacular line, even in the watered-down CBA — albeit in a 100-93 loss to a Guangdong Southern squad that features fellow NBA castoffs Yi Jianlian, Donald Sloan and … Carlos Boozer?



So, perhaps the problem for Smith wasn’t shot selection or volume of shots from distance, but that he wasn’t quite shooting enough. J-Smoove just needed to get loose — a theory supported by the fact Smith shot just 3-for-13 and 0-for-5 from three during a disappointing six-point debut in China three nights earlier. The NBA tried to put him in a box, but Josh Smith is a peacock, and you gotta let him fly.