You can't leaf through your home edition of encyclopedia Brittanica without hearing about men who were born "before their time." Thomas Edison comes to mind immediately when examining this breed of human. If he had electricity when he was born, rather than having to invent it for humanity, we would have all been watching porn on our Edison brand EPads...in 1910. And he would have made the entire thing in Amurica damn it. You have to imagine that an innovator like T-Pain would be even more successful in the inevitable robot-run Terminator like future. His music already sounds like a toaster banging a dial-up modem. He could basically replay everything he made in 2009 and go triple-plutunium.
With all that said, we rarely hear about men who came after their time. This post hopes to highlight one such man, named J.R. Smith. Anyone who's watched J.R. play knows that he should have been born 8-10 years earlier so he could have played in the Allen Iverson / Tracy McGrady NBA of our past. He, like me and the aforementioned, cares not for winning, or team glory and yearns only to make the three goggles, or occasional three wings. What I would give to see Shareff Adbur-Raheem trade baskets in a late 90's Grizz-Nuggets shootout. I Love This Game!!!!!
I believe that rapscallion Edison said absence makes the heart grow fonder. That phrase couldn't be more true about my love for J.R. He went to China, if only to make us long for what we had and lost. I figured he'd come back with two things: a bucket of cash and a rare but deadly strain of gonorrhea. Of course, he didn't disappoint. He scored points in bunches and angered everyone that was dumb enough to give him a contract. He lost 1.06 million dollars just for missing practices. Not a game, not a game, practice.
As you may have noticed, J.R. resurfaced with the Knicks this week. America is better off for him being back, if only for additional revenue from the tattoo parlors vying to ink the .03 percent of his body without a tattoo on it. Before he inevitably brings the Knicks back to mediocraty by trying to steal the spotlight from Lin, Carmelo and Amare (see here) let's take a look at the work he did in China, which was nothing short of Marburyesque.
J.R. Smith Scores 60 off the bench -It's impressive, but despite the headline, it wasn't 60 points from a seated position, which would be a record...
JR breaks 3 sets of Asian ankles...
JR goes 52 and 22 - I've never seen him attempt to rebound in the NBA. Rebounding must be a side effect of that Chinese avian flu.
JR Smith's 57 beat Marcus Williams' 49 - They were going crazy in the aisles in Jiangsu that night.
JR Smith - Crossover and Dunks - Okay fine, that would have been nasty in America too. We do try to play defense facing the opposition though. It makes defense slightly easier if less entertaining.
Welcome back J.R. At least one of us missed you.
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