J.R. Smith

J.R. Smith, also known as Earl Smith III, is a professional basketball player from the United States of America and plays as a shooting guard. Smith jumped around quite a bit during high school and after first attending the Steinert High School, he jumped to the McCorriston High School before finally ending up at Lakewood High School. Lakewood gave Smith the first opportunity to play high school basketball before he ended up transferring to Saint Benedict’s Preparatory School.

At his final destination, Smith scored at over 27 points per game with 6 rebounds and 5 assists before getting picked up by the University of North Carolina in 2003.

In April of 2004, just before he was scheduled to join college, Smith decided to forego college and join the NBA and declared for the Draft. Picked at 18th overall at the 2004 NBA Draft, Smith headed to the New Orleans Hornets where he averaged 10.3 points per game with 2.0 rebounds and 1.9 assists.

In 2005, he was part of the Rising Stars Slam Dunk Competition where he finished third behind Amare Stoudemire and winner, Josh Smith. At the end of the 2005-06 season, Smith was traded out to the Chicago Bulls, along with P.J. Brown, in exchange for Tyson Chandler. 7 days later, Smith was on the move again, this time to the Denver Nuggets in exchange for Howard Eisley and two 2007 second-round draft picks.

The same year, in December, Smith was part of the Knicks-Nuggets brawl on court that saw him get suspended for 10 games. The following year began badly for Smith as he missed a month of action due to a knee injury that required surgery.

At the beginning of the 2007-08 season, Smith was suspended for the first three games of the season after being involved in an incident outside a nightclub. He would, however, return to play 74 games that season, without any starts, scoring at 12.3 points per game.

In 2008, Smith was named to the Team USA Basketball select team that would help the main senior squad prepare for the Summer Olympics. He had a breakaway 2008-09 scoring at 15.2 points per game with 3.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists, all career-highs. Smith would also set a career high in appearances with 81.

Smith has been in a lot of driving-related incidents off the court where he has received up to 5 suspensions in 8 months including a case of vehicular manslaughter where a passenger in his car, Andre Bell, was killed after Smith smashed his car into another vehicle. Neither Smith nor Bell were wearing seatbelts at the time and both were ejected from the car. Smith was sentenced to 90 days in prison after pleading guilty, 60 of those days were suspended in exchange for 500 hours of community service.