J.R. Smith needles Knicks on Instagram after Cavs advance to ECF
The Eastern Conference semifinals didn’t start so well for J.R. Smith. The mercurial shooting guard missed the first two games of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ matchup with the Chicago Bulls, serving the suspension he received for clocking Jae Crowder in the face during Cleveland’s opening-round sweep of the Boston Celtics, and leaving the Cavs down a man on a wing at a time when they were already reeling from the loss of power forward Kevin Love.
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Smith came through after his return to the fold, though. He came off the bench to preserve the rhythm developed by replacement shooting guard Iman Shumpert and showed some of his old Sixth Man of the Year form, chipping in nine points on 50 percent shooting (44.4 percent from 3-point range) with four rebounds and one assist in 29.1 minutes per game over the next four contest, helping the Cavs close out the Bulls in six games to move on to the Eastern Conference finals. The Cavs outscored the Bulls by 45 points in Smith’s 63 minutes of floor time in winning Games 5 and 6.
Shumpert, too, was huge for David Blatt in this series, averaging 12.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 2.3 combined blocks and steals per game while also playing excellent defense on Bulls scoring threats Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler in the six-game victory. The Cavs absolutely whipped the Bulls when lineups featuring Smith and Shump shared the floor in the conference finals, outscoring them by 31.4 points per 100 possessions over the course of 74 minutes.
The swingmen have come in the space of five months, from withering on the vine for the dead-in-the-water New York Knicks to contributing in a major way for a team that sits just four victories away from the NBA Finals. After knocking off Chicago, Smith took to Instagram to celebrate the January trade that sent Smith and Shumpert from Midtown to the Midwest … and, of course, throw a little dig at the Phil Jackson-led front office that shipped them out:
“Couldn’t have said it better myself!!!” Smith wrote in the caption of his Instagram post. Zing!
(Smith struck a similar note when the Cavs visited Madison Square Garden before hammering the Knicks back in February: “Funny we’re in the situation we’re in. Tyson [Chandler] in Dallas playing well, me and Shump here playing well. We weren’t the fit they were looking for. Hopefully they find it.”)
We could go back over the litany of issues that arose, both on and off the court, during Smith’s time in New York that made the $6.4 million player option he holds for next season seem so toxic that A) the Knicks felt they needed to move him rather than try to include him as part of the rebuilding effort Jackson was hired to helm and B) they had to include Shumpert, a hard-working young defensive wing who can shoot and offer secondary playmaking, as a sweetener to pay his freight. But that’d taste a little bit too much like sour grapes for this Knicks fan.
Instead, we’ll just say: fair enough, J.R. Keep watching those backswings and elbows, and good luck letting it fly in Round 3.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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