For a few glorious days in early July, the 2015 NBA free-agency period was a rollicking carnival of drama, betrayal, and absurdity. Millions of dollars were won, and lost. Players were literally held hostage, albeit by their friends and in a chicken-positive environment. Chris Broussard was forced to apologize to Mark Cuban. It was by far the best of this summer’s slate of quirky cable miniseries—all that was missing was a daily introduction by Eric Jonrosh.
Alas, nothing gold can stay. Free agency is on life support, pretty much all the quality free agents have made their deals, and we’re left to track the low-intensity market for Quincy Acy and Kendrick Perkins. We knew this was coming; there are a finite number of players to be signed and a limited amount of cap space with which to sign them. The reasonable thing for basketball fans to do is hunker down and wait for training camp.
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I refuse to do this.
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NBA free agency needs a reboot in the truest Hollywood sense. We need to take a successful, entertaining production and just repeat the same plot over and over again with a new cast. We know that free agency is a story that works, but we need a new star—not in the traditional basketball sense (those dudes have all signed), but someone with the charisma to carry this hackneyed late-summer vehicle.
Let’s check a “best available free agents” list and hope for the best. Tristan Thompson? Too Canadian, and not in a charming, Michael J. Fox kind of way. Josh Smith? Already signed, please update your list. J.R. Smith? Ladies and gentleman, we’ve found our star.
J.R. Smith, the hardest working baller and the hardest balling worker in show business, is still out there, which means he’s still here to save free agency. When last we saw our hero, he was 24-for-77 during Cleveland’s six-game defeat in the Finals, and providing one quintessentially J.R. moment of false hope with a three-point barrage in the waning seconds of Game 6. Minutes after the game ended, he declined his $6.4 million player option. Later asked if he regretted the decision, Smith replied, “Uh, I mean, yes and no.” He will eventually sign somewhere, but this is J.R. Smith and so it’s hard to know where, or when. This is the sort of mysterious, mercurial leading man our story needs.
He may, in fact, be superior to the leading men it already has. Players tend to make logical choices in free agency, ones based on money, hometown pride, the opportunity to play with friends or win championships, or all of the above. These are decisions made with their brains. Smith is always compelling because he makes those decisions with his heart and his balls. Here is a player who can strip the tedium from free agency and make it the passion play it should have been all along.
So we are clearing the board, people. Forget about LaMarcus Aldridge, DeAndre Jordan, and other so-called “star” free agents of weeks past. It is all about J.R. now. Let’s get serious about three clubs that should court Smith—not for basketball purposes, but because the show must go on.
Being an unsigned free agent must hurt, although probably not as much as being schooled by Steph Curry. Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
Dallas Mavericks
The Mavs damn near pulled off the coup of the summer by convincing DeAndre Jordan to leave a title contender in L.A. for a Dallas squad that appears to be on a downswing. A great deal of credit for that must go to the Mavs’ forward Chandler Parsons, whose reputation as an elite recruiter and party liaison survived the eventual collapse of the Jordan negotiations.
On paper, Smith and Chandler appear to be the perfect offseason match. They killed at last season’s All-Star Weekend fashion show. They share a taste for the finer things in life: clothes, clubbing, women, and presumably basketball. Parsons likes to woo, Smith likes to be wooed. A Parsons/Smith recruitment party would likely have Caligula and Rick James looking down from Heaven like, “Damn, you kids might be overdoing it.” If you found Mark Cuban’s “makeup sex” comment on Jordan’s return to Los Angeles disturbing—and it was—just imagine his response as he watches the action with J.R.
L.A. Clippers
When it came to Jordan, the Clippers were able to overcome Parsons’ persuasion through a somewhat unsubtle method: they locked Jordan in his own home, where they watched movies and ate chicken fingers with him until it was time to sign the contract.
I’d like to see them try something similar with J.R., though I highly doubt he’d let himself be taken prisoner so easily. We’re talking about a dude who once dropped $450,000 on an armored truck; he probably has escape tunnels throughout his property. This could be a potential “Hogan’s Heroes” situation, except that when Smith emerges from a half-mile tunnel he’s in the VIP section at 1 Oak.
Oklahoma City Thunder
The prospect of a J.R. Smith/Dion Waiters backcourt is nothing less than magical. Toss Russell Westbrook into the mix and you have the potential for both a potent three-guard lineup and extreme interpersonal violence.
More than that, though, the move would allow the Thunder to reunite Smith with his basketball soul mate, Steve Novak:
Smith and Novak made by far the most beautiful partnership in NBA history; compared to them, John Stockton and Karl Malone were two strangers passing a basketball back and forth through a glory hole.
The last time these two played together, in 2012-13, Novak was a valuable contributor for a playoff team, and Smith was named Sixth Man of the Year. Separating the two proved disastrous—to Steve’s game, to J.R.’s game, and to the national interest of the general public. If the first two J.R. stories are more popcorn-y stuff—soft porn and action-comedy, respectively—this is the one with Oscar potential.
J.R. will keep his own counsel, of course, and will entertain us wherever he goes, even in something as dry as a free-agency negotiation. But J.R. in Oklahoma City is the story we need right now, and not just because it’s amusing to imagine him dealing with that city’s nightlife. Reuniting Smith and Novak is a chance to fix a basketball wrong; perhaps it can even fix everything that’s gone wrong in our nation since these two last brought us together. Let’s push J.R. toward Oklahoma City, and a reunion that might just save us all.
