The Weekside: Mr. Smith Goes to Los Angeles

What a long, strange trip it has been so far for Josh Smith — who just is now adding another odd chapter to his career with the Clippers

Josh Smith was once the future. He was a forward with guard skills and a game that defied traditional descriptions. He was Rasheed Wallace 2.0, a defensive force who brought uncanny length, skill and athleticism. For whole quarters, he could become Waterboy-like, stealing the rock, swatting it out of the sky, and inducing a level of panicked terror among offenses that a team with the ball should never have.

He rose to popularity in Atlanta, winning a dunk contest while wearing the jersey of the team’s patron Saint Dominique and flirting with a 5×5 every few games. As a 22-year-old, he averaged 17.2 points, 8.2 rebounds, 3.4. assists, 2.8 blocks, and 1.5 steals per game.

It’s fitting he never made an All-Star team — somehow — since it suits his always-on-the-cusp career. Josh Smith was always tomorrow in a world where today never actually ends.

We all know what happened after the shine wore off.

Smoove stopped wrecking rims, his swarming defensive presence wavered, and he started shooting a 3-pointers. A bunch of them. Too many. Lord have mercy, altogether too many.

It’s hard to say who is most to blame. In a country where personal accountability is trumpeted, this is mostly Smith’s fault. But what did Larry Drew due? After Mike Woodson convinced Smith to only take 7 total 3-pointers one season — when the Hawks won 53 games — Drew took over the following year, and Josh started bombing again. Where was the front office in all this? Why was there no ballot initiative from the Atlanta city council for Josh to get back in the paint where he belongs?

Regardless of how to divide blame, there was only one real solution: Josh Smith had to move on.

The Hawks had seemingly put together a fun team, with Smith, Al Horford, and Joe Johnson comprising a B-list big three. But it never worked, Johnson couldn’t live up to his contract (despite annual All-Star appearances), Mike Woodson couldn’t run a proper offense, Drew never made anything work, and new GM Danny Ferry arrived to clean house. He didn’t even bother to trade Smith away, as he did with Johnson. Ferry just let him walk in free agency, and the Detroit Pistons happily signed the Smoovest one. They had seen what we all had in Smith’s early years and must have believed that the one-time wunderkind still existed underneath all the bad habits that Smith had developed.

They were wrong.

Smith’s first year in Detroit was the worst shooting season of his career. He hit a career-low 41.9% of his field-goal attempts, including an unfathomable 26.4% from 3-point range. Yet, even with such horrid accuracy, he chucked up 3.4 long-range attempts per game. Who let this happen? Where are the parents?

The Summer after Smith littered Detroit with bricks and the Pistons lost 53 games, Stan Van Gundy was handed the franchise, taking over both in the front office and on the sidelines. The former Orlando Magic coach had previously pushed along the NBA’s transformation into a smaller, 3-point-happy league when he put Rashard Lewis at power forward next to Dwight Howard and guided an otherwise unimpressive collection of talent to an NBA Finals. Maybe he couldn’t turn Josh Smith into Lewis, but an offensive mind like him could at least make some use of Smoove, right? And worst case, Van Gundy was also known as disciplinarian, so he at least could force Smith to follow instructions?

Before he even go the opportunity to try, however, Van Gundy reportedly had a chance to rid himself of that challenge.

The Sacramento Kings may have offered a package as intriguing as Jason Thompson and Derrick Williams for Smith. But Van Gundy turned it down, later admitting that he wanted the chance to try to coach Smith before giving up on his talent. He didn’t want to just give Smith away before he really knew what he had.

It was a dumb move.

Smith produced even worse in his 28 games on the Van Gundy Pistons than he did the previous year in Detroit. So Stan admitted defeat. He made a hard choice to simply waive the one-time phenom and take a salary cap hit that will keep $5 million of Josh’s salary on the payroll every season until 2020. Some praised Van Gundy’s bold decision to banish the problem rather than letting it fester, but even with a salary cap that is set to sky rocket next summer, that is difficult medicine to swallow.

It was the best thing to happened to Josh Smith in years, however.

He caught on with the Houston Rockets midseason and ended up having a break-out performance in the playoffs. He paired with Dwight Howard (somewhat poetically given the Van Gundy/Howard fallout in Orlando) to confound the Dallas Mavericks with alley-oops in round one then became arguably the biggest reason Houston mounted an historic comeback against the Clippers to move on the Western Conference finals. Best of all, Smith led that Rocket resurgence in Game 6 by hitting a ton of 3s.

Because of course he did. He’s Josh Smith.

And now he has joined the Los Angeles Clippers.

Fresh off a coup to win back the heart and mind of DeAndre Jordan, the team that Smith shot in the heart last postseason is now truly wacky. Rumors of Jordan’s once-certain departure centered around issues he had with Chris Paul, and those likely won’t disappear entirely just because they decided to stay together this summer. Lance Stephenson, coming off an inexplicably horrible season in Charlotte, has joined the team. And as with Van Gundy in Detroit, Doc Rivers seems a bit overwhelmed with a dual coach/GM role, in which he re-signed his son this summer while handing out a curiously friendly player option to a guy who has done nothing in this league to earn such negotiating leverage.

Now Doc has Josh Smith, too.

This is a team that beat the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the postseason only to cough up what would have be a franchise-first trip to the West finals. They staved off irrelevancy by convincing Jordan to stay. And now they have a cast of reserves that makes no sense but sure does look intriguing on paper.

So of course Josh Smith had to join the team.

Will it work out? Well, almost nothing ever has for Smith or the team’s he has played on. But just last season, he did make Daryl Morey look smart for signing him last season in Houston. And he does have so much talent. And he is still only 29.

And …

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