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J.R. Smith Didn’t Pack Enough Underwear for the NBA Bubble

In Thursday’s Hot Clicks: J.R. Smith’s packing mistake, American Christian Pulisic’s tremendous Premier League performance and more.

Dan Gartland

We’ve all been there

If you were going to be away from home for up to three months, how many pairs of underwear would you pack? Probably a lot, right? Well, not J.R. Smith. 

Smith, who hasn’t played in the NBA since November 2018, joined up with the Lakers for their playoff push and spoke with Spectrum Sportsnet about life in the bubble. He said he likes that he can play golf every day and the food has gotten better since the initial quarantine period. There’s just one problem. 

Asked what he wished he had packed, Smith replied, “Man, more underwear and socks.”

“Honestly, I packed like seven because I thought I’d be good for once a day,” Smith said. “But I ain’t calculate all the showers in between everything that I be doing, so I’ve been running through in like two, three days. We’ve got a great laundry system, though. We’ve got a great laundry system, so I’m good.”

Miscalculating the underwear situation is a classic packing mistake. Smith is lucky that the laundry setup is sufficient enough to keep him in clean drawers all week. 

His praise for the laundry system sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. When I first saw the massive laundry room Disney constructed specifically for the NBA, I had visions of players doing their own laundry. I thought Russell Westbrook would have to ask Chris Paul if he was done using that dryer. That’s not the case, though. 

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Laundry actually sounds like a total pain in the ass. It falls to the team’s equipment managers, who have to take a bus to where that laundry room was set up. 

From the Chicago Tribune:

After practices or games, equipment managers will have to load up the sweaty gear, take it back to the hotel, then call a shuttle to pick them up and take them to the laundry facility built for the restart — 66 washers and 66 dryers, all lined up inside what once was a batting cage at the Atlanta Braves' former spring training complex.

Maybe J.R. should order a few pairs of underwear off of Amazon to make life a little easier for the Lakers’ gear guy.

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How the Dodgers landed Mookie Betts for 13 years. ... Daniel Bard’s road back to the majors started with him Googling “how to get rid of the yips” seven years ago. ... 20 reasons to be excited for the NBA’s restart. 

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The Blue Jays are homeless again after being denied permission by the Pennsylvania department of health to play “home” games in Pittsburgh. ... ESPN has a profile of Orange Cassidy, a pro wrestler who has risen to stardom by putting in as little effort as possible. ... Alex Caruso made the difficult decision to stay in the NBA bubble with the Lakers rather than go to his sister’s 100-person, indoor wedding in Texas. ... Weeks after his return from cancer, Oskar Lindblom has signed a three-year contract extension with the Flyers.

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Artifacts discovered in a cave in Mexico suggest that humans may have arrived in North America thousands of years earlier than previously believed. ... Jeremy Strong (of Succession fame) apparently “begged” Aaron Sorkin to spray him with real tear gas while filming a new movie. ... A hostage situation in Ukraine ended after the country’s president complied with the criminal’s request to tell people to watch a Joaquin Phoenix movie. ... Colorado is attempting to curb the spread of the coronavirus by banning the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants after 10 p.m.

This guy loves releasing plans for things that will never get built and were never a good idea to build in the first place

The weather in New York was wild last night

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Don’t have a seafood feast in front of a bunch of seagulls

A good song

Email dan.gartland@si.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to see previous editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.

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Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland is the writer and editor of Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, covering everything an educated sports fan needs to know. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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