J.R. Smith (Photo via Instagram, @teamswish)
Former National Basketball Association champion J.R. Smith has been on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth since stepping away from professional basketball. After winning his second NBA championship with LeBron James during the covid-19 pandemic season, Smith found himself at a crossroads.
The last time he played an NBA game was in November 2018 before joining the Los Angeles Lakers in the middle of the 2019-20 season. However, his second hiatus from the court felt different, leading him to a mission of self-discovery and self-improvement. In the process, he found a newfound passion for golf and now hints at a potential NBA return.
“That’s what I feel like more than anything — it was hard for me to grasp that because I felt like I was moving on from the game,” he said in an interview while discussing his first big production project, Redefined: J. R. Smith,” “Redefined.”
The four-part docuseries, produced by James and Maverick Carter under their Uninterrupted entertainment brand, will premiere April 4 on Amazon Prime.
He revealed that he wasn’t sure what to do with his life after basketball.
He said to The Post, “And then it was just like. ‘What am I doing? I gotta figure this out. Like this can’t be life after basketball. This is it. Am I going to be doing this for the rest of my life?’”
“That’s what I feel like more than anything — it was hard for me to grasp that because I felt like I was moving on from the game,” he said in an interview with The New York Post discussing his first big production project, “Redefined: J. R. Smith,” a documentary about his journey.
When his journey started in the NBA, he says he wasn’t ready for the success and fame.
“I just wish I was more mature at the time, opposed to being so young-minded,” Smith said, adding: “I was 18, but I was more — at a mature sense — I was 13,” he recalled to The New York Times.
He spent 16 seasons to the NBA, having played in various cities for several teams– from New Orleans and Denver to New York, Cleveland, and Los Angeles. Throughout his career, he had moments of triumph mixed with controversy, such as a suspension for throwing soup at an assistant coach and being fined from the league for sharing what they deemed “inappropriate pictures” on Twitter. He earned the prestigious Sixth Man of the Year Award.
He admits he wasted his money, frequenting clubs, spending large amounts of cash on clothes, and using the $90 million he made in salary over 16 NBA seasons to pay fines levied by his teams or the league, I Am Athlete podcast, hosted by former NFL player Brandon Marshall, CNBC reported.
Now, he says he wishes he’d spent more giving back to his community.
“I could have fed my whole community 10 times over with the money I was just [paying in fines for being] late on the bus,” Smith said in a February episode of the I Am Athlete podcast, hosted by former NFL player Brandon Marshall.
“You know how many people you can change [their] lifestyle with $10 million in our hood?” Smith said. “We’d rather go throw $60,000 in the strip club…than go feed 2,500 people in the hood.”
While Smith, 37, initially grappled with the idea of moving on from basketball.
He soon found different ways to stay connected to it. Smith discovered a passion for teaching the game, particularly through small individual workouts with high school students.
“You find out where you can make an impact on the game, whether it be, not just playing, but by scouting, coaching… consulting situations, workouts, trainers. There’s so many different elements of the game where you can really make an impact. And for me, I found a passion doing small individual workouts with high school kids and stuff like that, and I still feel that gratification that I got with hooping,” he told The Post.
Smith openly talks about how he went through a period of self-sabotage after his second championship win. He spent his days gaming, playing golf, and struggling to find direction. Eventually, he realized he needed to break this cycle and explore new avenues for personal growth.
He, at one point, went into rehab and it was when his therapy experience began. “At the time, I was in a drug rehab program for marijuana,” Smith said to The Post when asked about being “required” to attend therapy. “And that was part of the requirement, to go to therapy.
“And it was like ‘man, I got to do all this because I was smoking weed. And it was almost like treating it like it was like crack cocaine… I’m like ‘you’re making it seem like… I’m on meth or some s-t bro. So, I’m going to therapy with all these people and around all these different people, and it’s such a weird environment and experience for therapy,” he remembered to The Post. “And it really wasn’t the best experience for me because it’s a different experience for a Black man to go to therapy. And for this to be my first experience, it was like, is it that serious-type situation?”
Smith said he currently attends therapy and is an advocate for it.
“When I really broke it down to how much I was just self-sabotaging and feeling sorry for myself, so many different things. You have to get back on your horse some type of way. And for me, it started off slow for a year and then little, before I know it, one step in front of the other, it just started taking its way,” he said to The Post.
One significant aspect of Smith’s post-NBA life has been his pursuit of education. He enrolled at North Carolina A&T State University, aiming to earn a degree in Liberal Arts. Smith’s return to the classroom was not without its challenges, as he grappled with dyslexia and ADHD.
He also said the process of self-discovery led to a discovery of his heritage and the theory of Black collective economics.
“I always wanted to learn about my heritage, learn where I came from, learn more about Black people,” Smith said. “It really turned into self-love, learning more about myself. That’s really what catapulted me back into therapy, to try to understand, and try to really master myself, and master my mind.”
And this also means to value his community as well as to uplift it, he noted.
“We’re so trained, so embedded to have that Eurocentric mindset, to worry about myself, worry about me, worry about mine,” he said. “When you make over $100 million in your career, is [giving $5 or $10 million] going to change your lifestyle?”
Despite embracing his new endeavors, Smith has not officially retired from the NBA. He remains open to the possibility of returning to the league if the right opportunity arises. He has continued to train and stay in shape, ready to answer the call from any NBA team.
J.R. Smith (Photo via Instagram, @teamswish)
