J.R. Smith has gained a reputation during his 12-year NBA career as someone who lives whim-to-whim—and it has made him something of a curiosity in the sporting world.
Mostly, Smith satisfies expectations in goofy ways, like the $50,000 fine he received in 2014 for untying opponents’ shoelaces when they weren’t looking. Or the multiple times he has purchased cotton candy from the bench during a game. Or even his frequent appearances in the tabloids thanks to his seeming love of partying and his romantic connection to celebrities like popstar Rihanna.
Other times, it’s more sinister. In 2007, Smith’s best friend died from head injuries sustained when Smith ran a stop sign and their SUV was hit by an oncoming car. Just this season, the police alleged that Smith choked a 19-year-old man in New York City after the man teased Smith for being traded from the New York Knicks to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Video released later revealed that Smith only shoved the teen, and no charges were filed.
But in his brightest moment as a professional, Smith showed there’s more to him than meets the eye. Last month, after Smith’s Cavaliers defeated the Golden State Warriors to claim the NBA title, the guard fielded a question from a reporter about how his family has helped him to this point.
He took 11 seconds to compose himself.
“I’ve been in a lot of dark spots in my life,” Smith said. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to get out of it…My dad is easily one of my biggest inspirations to play this game. And to hear people talk bad about me, it hurts me because I know it hurts him. And that’s not who I am. I know he raised better, and I know I want to do better…If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t know where I would be. Honestly, if it wasn’t for them, if it wasn’t for the structure and the backbone that I have, I wouldn’t be able to mess up and keep coming back and be able to sit in front of you as a world champion.”
Then he walked off the stage and collapsed, in tears, into the arms of his father, Big Earl Smith.
As Smith certainly recognizes, he owes his career to Big Earl, who has been mapping a road to NBA success since the younger Smith first played organized basketball at 3. It’s a road that, for a year, passed through Hamilton Township.
The elder Smith was a fine basketball player in his own right—and a tough one. In the 1980s, he’d made the rounds in leagues around New Jersey, including the Mercer Unlimited League. There, he butted heads with another fierce competitor named Roger Bigos.
A decade later, Bigos had cemented himself as a coaching star by transforming the Steinert High boys’ basketball team into a state power and perennial title contender. At that point, in the late 1990s, the Spartans featured a highly touted player named Dahntay Jones, who would later go on to the NBA. (Jones, coincidentally, signed with the Cavaliers right before the 2016 playoffs, meaning the NBA champions had two players with Hamilton ties.)
When it came time to select a high school for his son, Big Earl Smith wanted to entrust his boy to his former foe, Roger Bigos. Big Earl brought Smith—then at Millstone Middle School—to watch the Spartans at the Neptune Jubilee tournament. Nearly two decades later, Smith remembered the game as what sold him on Steinert.
“That’s when I really started watching them,” Smith told me before an Oct. 8, 2015 game in Philadelphia. “My dad has known Coach Bigos forever. I’ve seen his kids play all the time. It just felt like a good situation.”
Smith grew up in Millstone, which sends its students to Allentown High School. But Big Earl owned some property in Hamilton, and used the address to enroll Smith into Steinert as a freshman in 1999.
Bigos said he initially didn’t know that Smith was Big Earl’s son. At 6-2 and with big hands and feet, Smith hadn’t yet grown into his body. But he did show Bigos right away that he’d be a talented basketball player. Smith had a sweet jump shot like his father, and started immediately on the JV team at Steinert. He scored 28 points per game.
He played with Steinert until January 2000, when questions arose about whether Smith really lived in Hamilton.
“I guess Allentown was rattling the cage because his sister went there and he didn’t,” Bigos said. “But he wanted to play for us.”
Smith transferred to McCorristin High School (now Trenton Catholic Academy), where Smith said he never really found his niche. The next school year, he moved on to Lakewood High School. A couple years later, he enrolled in St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark for an extra season of work at the scholastic level. The decision paid off, as the New Orleans Hornets took Smith with the 18th pick in the 2004 NBA Draft.
Since then, Smith’s NBA career has taken him to Denver, New York and Cleveland. He’s won accolades like the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award, as well as plenty of scorn for his emotional, physical style of play. In 2006, a brawl started after Smith went after a player who had fouled him hard. In 2013, the NBA suspended Smith from a playoff game after he elbowed an opponent in the chin.
Just a day before I spoke to him, Smith had a flagrant foul called on him in the preseason opener against the Atlanta Hawks for smacking Al Horford in the face trying to defend a lay-up.
This, again, is Big Earl’s influence. The elder Smith emphasized hustle, and told his son he’d be joining the family construction business if he ever failed at basketball.
“Whenever I strap these shoes on, I’m going to play hard,” Smith said. “This is something you can’t take for granted. You can run and slip on the court, and your career could be over. You always think, ‘Oh man, I could have gone just that much harder.’ I can’t live my life like that. I go hard at everything I do.”
J.R. Smith is 30 years old, which means the path behind is almost certainly longer than what’s ahead for him as a player. Smith has been moving around for most of his life, trying to find a place he fit. A place he could achieve his dream.
“J.R. wears his emotions on his sleeves,” Cavaliers forward James Jones said to me Oct. 8. “He has a passion about basketball. He’s been on some teams where they’ve had success, but not the success that he really wanted. He struggled when he was in the situation where they were losing. It was tough for him to handle losing. He’s a talented player. He just needs to feel like he fits somewhere. And he fits here.”
In Cleveland, Smith finally has arrived at the destination Big Earl mapped out for him 31 years ago. But Smith hasn’t forgotten about the steps along the way, including his time in Hamilton.
In October, I asked Smith whether he thought his time at Steinert had done anything to prepare him for the NBA. He bemoaned the fact he wasn’t able to stay at Steinert longer, but said he didn’t regret his decision to go there in the first place.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said with a smile. “Stepping stone.”
Sixteen years before he was an NBA champion with the Cleveland Cavaliers, J.R. Smith was a freshman at Steinert High School.,
