J.R. Smith was rather unceremoniously dumped by the New York Knicks last season, this cannot be argued. For someone with the talent to start at shooting guard on a team that may very well take the NBA title this year, to deal Smith for two players who currently aren’t on the Knicks plus Lance Thomas clearly showed that the Knicks wanted to wash their hands of Smith.
A 19-year old in New York reportedly pointed out as much to J.R. Smith last week, and alleged he got a shove and a chokehold from the Cleveland Cavaliers guard as a result.
The New York Daily News reports that Smith allegedly got into an early morning altercation at 4 a.m. outside of a pizzeria in New York City on Nov. 13, some 13 hours before Smith’s Cavs were set to take on the hometown Knicks.
From the Daily News:
The teen, Justin Brown, who wears braces and hails from Harlem, was with pals who chided Smith for ignoring their fan request for a photo.
Smith is seen on a cell phone video walking away from the group, sources said.
"That's why New York kicked you out, yo!" Brown remarked.
Brown told cops that after the verbal brush, Smith, who is 6-foot-6 and 225 pounds, checked him against the exterior of the building and put his hands around Brown's neck, police sources said.
Smith’s lawyer, in talking to the Daily News, called the allegations “completely false.”
NBA players sometimes have to start their workday around the time most of us are shuffling out of our shift, and New York nightlife is a fantastic thing to take in, but if this report is true it ties back to Smith’s worrying relationship with the city.
Often chided for performing poorly on Sundays, purportedly after a long Saturday night out, Smith credited a lack of Cleveland nightlife earlier this year when he thrived following the trade to northern Ohio. Not unlike a spurned lover, he tossed a shot the Knicks’ way after Cleveland defeated Chicago to move onto the Eastern Conference finals last May. The back and forth was no doubt made worse by Phil Jackson’s needless on-record comments about what Smith thought was a private conversation about his personal life.
If the report is true to the letter, however, one can kind of see where J.R. is coming from in this instance.
Not only is J.R. Smith under no obligation to pose for a photograph, the last thing he wants is to have some shot of him from four in the morning sent out to Instagram or Twitter, passed around to be mocked as a further example of J.R.’s late-night ways, and likely discussed on this website by the time lunch in that pizzeria is served.
This doesn’t excuse any – alleged – violence, but not posing for photographs is not why New York kicked J.R. Smith out, yo. The rebuilding Knicks had no use for a soon-to-be 30-year-old shooting guard, and his shot selection.
In completely unrelated news, we swear, apparently Smith had been playing with a thumb fracture that he was unaware of:
An X-ray over the weekend revealed a broken bone in his right thumb he never knew he had. Smith doesn’t know how or when it happened, but team doctors told him it occurred long enough ago that it healed on its own. But the hand is still prone to swelling whenever he gets hit on it, which happened Friday at Madison Square Garden.
“Every time I get banged on it, it swells up,” he said.
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