The Weekside: J.R. Smith’s unlikely route to Finals redemption

J.R. Smith had a horrific NBA Finals in 2015. With Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love sidelined due to injury, LeBron James needed a lot of help. Smith provided almost none, shooting a sad 31.2% in the series.

It was an utter disappointment. The mercurial gunner had joined the team midseason, along with Iman Shumpert, in a trade with the Knicks. These pickups, in addition to a deal for Timofey Mozgov, turned around Cleveland’s season.

The Cavs were 19-16 on the day the trade was made, sitting fifth in the lowly Eastern Conference. They then ripped off a 34-13 record the rest of the way to take first, as their new shooting guard averaged 12.7 points per night in 45 games and hit 39.0% of this 3s.

But when the Chosen One and the team needed J.R. the most, he didn’t show up. And nobody familiar with his career full of inconsistency and letdown was the least bit surprised.

In this year’s rematch with the Warriors, J.R. was much, much better. He didn’t light the world on fire every night from downtown. But he shot a much more respectable 40.0% and combined to hit 9 shots from behind the arc during wins in Game 3 and Game 6. After starting out poorly, he scored in double figures in each of the final five games — four of which were victories for Cleveland.

More impressive than he shooting was his defense.

J.R. Smith played big minutes throughout the series, averaging 37 per night. His main assignment was Klay Thompson, who shot — for him — a repulsive 35.0% from 3-point range in the Finals. To put that in perspective, Thompson has shot 41.4% or better from deep every year of his career except for one. In that one down year? Klay made 40.1% of his 3s.

And he was coming into the championship series on fire. He made an all-time record 11 triples in Game 6 against the Oklahoma City Thunder while hitting 41.7% of his 3s for the series. Against the Portland Trail Blazers, he made 50.0%.

So Klay going 35% from deep over a seven-game stretch is like a mortal shooter hitting 30%.

J.R. Smith wasn’t the sole reason Klay struggled. But Smith bothered him throughout the Finals and managed to hold him below 20 points per game.

Smith was also often tasked with tracking Steph Curry all around the arc due to the Cavs switching scheme, and he played him as well as anyone. Part of his success was certainly the simplicity of the assignment. Throughout the Finals, coach Tyronn Lue mandated that whoever was defending Curry never leave his side. There was no help defense played, simply face-guarding the world’s most lethal shooter and staying within arms reach of his torso even when the MVP was 40 feet away from the ball. Smith’s duty on Thompson was very similar: Forget everything else and don’t let the Warriors’ shooters shake free.

With such a tactically easy — if very hard in practice — responsibility, Smith did great. He stayed with both Steph and Klay through screens better than anyone else and didn’t allow the shooters to get comfortable.

Both Kyrie and Iman Shumpert checked Curry as much, or more, but Smith seemed to do the best work, using his larger size to disrupt a player who was unable to use his quickness to get by the likes of Tristan Thompson off the bounce, let alone wing players.

This was surprising. But not outright unprecedented.

People forget: J.R. Smith was a capable, focused defender at times early in his career. His athleticism has always been his best gift — even more than his sweet shooting touch — and when he was playing alongside Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups in Denver, the Nuggets were hard to score on.

That Nuggets team had the 8th best defense in the NBA, and while Smith was far from a key reason — Nene and Kenyon Martin owned the paint as Billups and Dahntay Jones locked up the perimeter — he was not a disaster. He came up in that environment and learned some solid fundamentals. So even if he has not often been focused enough on a day-to-day basis to put them to good use, he knows how to play on that end of the floor.

Never was that more clear — or important — than on a highlight that belongs to LeBron James. It may end up being the LeBron James highlight. This might be the first thing the world sees in every LeBron highlight reel 30 years from now. Like the Dr. J cup dunk on Michael Cooper or Michael Jordan’s “Shot” (pick one), the chasedown block James delivered late in Game 7 was an all-timer.

It came with two minutes left with the score tied in the maybe the biggest game of his career. Steph and Andre Iguodala ran a break. They executed flawlessly. Iggy was poised for an easy bucket.

Only J.R. Smith was back. And he played great transition defense, reading a fundamentally sound bounce pass by Steph and then reverse pivoting to try to prevent Iguodala from scoring. Stopping a two-on-one in the NBA is a fool’s errand. You can play it perfectly and still fail — that’s normally the outcome. But J.R. protected the rim well enough. He forced Iguodala to double-clutch, delaying the shot attempt with his effort and pesky hands.

That was the split second LeBron needed.

James flew in like a pterodactyl and pinned the ball against the glass. It was the biggest play in the biggest game. And it probably never happens without J.R. Smith’s transition defense.

This isn’t how we expect the guy who calls himself Swish to help decide a game. He’s usually making 3s or taking comically bad shots — giving either his team or the opponent a marked advantage. But he was able to redeem himself in the Finals, less by being a shot-maker and more by being a reliable role player who was positively helping his team on defense even when the buckets weren’t coming.

After the Game 7 win, you could tell just how much the redemption meant to J.R. Smith. As he sat at the podium, crying his eyes out while trying to answer questions from the media, he certainly wasn’t thinking about his series-long ball denial and effort to fight through screens.

He was looking at his deeper redemption arc, his attempt at a lifelong redemption. He seemed to be deep in an emotional reflection about being a guy who has rarely been wanted by teams as much as tolerated for an incredible skill set that is marred by his infuriating approach to the sport and team play.

He has been labelled a bad person, a party-going malcontent, and a locker room cancer. He has dealt with fans and media from all over wishing he would be traded. Most tragically of all, he has had to come to terms with causing a car crash that killed his 21-year-old friend.

The life and times of J.R. Smith have been fraught with real and on-court adversity ever since the tattooed shooter entered the league.

Winning a ring doesn’t change everything. J.R. Smith remains J.R. Smith. But he proved a lot of people wrong with his play in the Finals — and did so in ways few would expect.

And in the postgame, he showed everyone his humanity and how even someone who is portrayed as a real-life cartoon character can know deep pain — and the greatest joys. He thanked his parents for their role in helping him become a champ, saying he didn’t even know where he would be without them helping him through the darkest times.

“My dad is easily one of my biggest inspirations to play this game,” said J.R. through the tears on Father’s Day. “To hear people talk bad about me, it hurts me because I know it hurts him.”

It’s unlikely that being a role player on a title team changes the conversation around J.R. Smith. It seems equally unlikely that his on- and off-court behavior changes enough for him to earn a new reputation this late in life.

At this point, Smith is who he is.

Who he is now, however, will always include the words “NBA Champion.” And even though it won’t be as widely recognized as it should be, he was a big reason that LeBron James blocked that shot. He was a key cog in shutting down the Splash Brother.

J.R. Smith was a huge reason why Cleveland won it’s first trophy in a half century.