Los Angeles Lakers: Why the Lakers don’t need J.R Smith

2. J.R. Smith has not played a professional basketball game in almost two years and was not even good the last time we saw him

J.R. Smith was a great role player for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the four-year stretch but that was a lot longer ago than it seems. The last time that LeBron James (and J.R. Smith) was in the Finals was over two calendar years ago.

Even worse for Smith, it has almost been two years since he has even stepped foot on an NBA court. November 19, 2018. That was the last time that Smith played in an NBA game and he only scored two points in five minutes.

The team is already taking a gamble on someone in Dion Waiters who has not played much this season but at least he has had some time in this hiatus to get to know his teammates and the schemes and his potential role with the team. Just throwing Smith in the mix and having him come to this playoff bubble is not going to get great results.

Plus, it is not like he was great the last time we saw him, either. There is a reason why he has remained unsigned for so long.

Over his last three seasons with Cleveland, which accounts for 132 games, Smith was averaging 8.2 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game in 27.7 minutes per game. He was shooting very poorly from the field as well, shooting 37.9 percent overall and 36.2 percent from beyond the arc.

In fact, in those three combined seasons, his 10.7 points per 36 minutes were the seventh-lowest among players with at least 100 games started. That would be okay if he was great defensively still but he wasn’t. He posted the two worst defensive win-share seasons in 2016-17 and 2017-18 since his first two seasons in the league.

His combined 1.6 defensive win shares that season were the second-lowest among players with at least 3,400 minutes played across those two seasons. He was not good offensively and he was not good defensively.

So why? If I am the Los Angeles Lakers, I would much rather just get someone like Nick Young who could shoot more consistently if need be or pick from the bench and give someone like Quinn Cook (who we did not even mention) a bigger role to be a three-point specialist.

The Los Angeles Lakers do not need J.R Smith. They have plenty of depth without him and he simply was not good the last time that we saw him, which happened to be almost two full years ago.