J.R. Smith · Biography

With 4.7 seconds left in regulation of Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals and the score tied against the Golden State Warriors, J. R. Smith grabbed an offensive rebound off a missed free throw and dribbled away from the basket, apparently convinced that Cleveland were ahead. His pass to George Hill came with 1.2 seconds on the clock, the game went to overtime and the Cavaliers lost 124-114 before being swept in the series. That play became the best-known image of a sixteen-year career, from 2004 to 2020, in which Earl Joseph Smith III, born on September 9, 1985, in Freehold, New Jersey, won two NBA championships, with Cleveland in 2016 and with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020, as well as the 2013 Sixth Man of the Year award.

High school and the 2004 draft

Smith played two seasons of basketball at Lakewood High School before moving in 2002 to Saint Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark; in all, he spent five years in high school. In 2004 he shared MVP honors at the McDonald’s All-American Game with Dwight Howard and was named a second-team Parade All-American. He had committed to the University of North Carolina but went straight to the draft instead: the New Orleans Hornets took him with the 18th pick of the first round in 2004. In his rookie season he finished third in the Slam Dunk Contest, a placing he repeated in 2009.

New Orleans and Denver

After two seasons in New Orleans, he was traded on July 14, 2006, to the Chicago Bulls along with P. J. Brown in the deal that sent Tyson Chandler to the Hornets. Six days later Chicago moved him on to the Denver Nuggets for Howard Eisley and two second-round picks. In December 2006 he was suspended for ten games for his part in the brawl between the Nuggets and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. In Denver he settled in as a scorer off the bench: on April 13, 2009, he scored a career-high 45 points, he finished second in the 2008-09 Sixth Man of the Year voting and he played 16 playoff games that spring. On December 23, 2009, he became the first NBA player with more than one game of ten or more made three-pointers.

China and New York

During the 2011 lockout he signed a one-year deal with the Zhejiang Golden Bulls of the Chinese Basketball Association. In 32 games he averaged 34.4 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.1 assists, scored 60 points on February 1, 2012, and finished as the league’s scoring champion and an All-Star. On February 17, 2012, he signed with the New York Knicks. In 2012-13 he averaged a career-high 18.1 points and won the Sixth Man of the Year award. He re-signed with New York on July 11, 2013, but missed the first five games of the following season for violating the league’s anti-drug policy. In April 2014, against the Miami Heat, he set an NBA record with 22 three-point attempts in a single game and a Knicks record with ten made.

Cleveland and the 2016 title

On January 5, 2015, the Knicks sent him to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a three-team trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder that also took Iman Shumpert to Ohio. That season LeBron James’s Cavaliers reached the Finals and lost to Golden State. In 2015-16 Smith made 204 three-pointers, a Cavaliers regular-season record, and 65 more in the playoffs, another franchise record. He scored in double figures in each of the last five games of the 2016 Finals, in which Cleveland won four of five against Golden State to claim the first championship in its history. The two teams met again in the 2017 Finals, won by Golden State in five games, and in 2018. On March 2, 2018, he was suspended for one game for throwing a bowl of soup at assistant coach Damon Jones.

The Lakers, the 2020 title and North Carolina A&T

On November 20, 2018, the Cavaliers announced that Smith would no longer be with the team, and they waived him on July 15, 2019. On July 1, 2020, the Lakers signed him for the rest of the 2019-20 season. He appeared in ten playoff games and won his second NBA championship when Los Angeles beat the Miami Heat in six games in the Finals. It was his last season in the league, which he left with 977 regular-season games and 12,148 points, an average of 12.4 per game.

In 2021 he enrolled at North Carolina A&T State University and joined the Aggies golf team as a walk-on. He earned a spot in the Phoenix Invitational by a single stroke and was named the university’s Academic Athlete of the Year for 2021-22 with a 4.0 grade point average. On May 9, 2026, he graduated in Greensboro with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies.