Lakers News: 2020 Laker J.R. Smith Wants To Return To NBA

LeBron's long-time teammate feels his career was unfairly cut short.

16-year league veteran swingman J.R. Smith was last seen on an NBA floor winning a title with the 2020 Los Angeles Lakers in the Orlando Disneyland "bubble" campus, having defeated Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat in six games. But apparently he wishes that his NBA story didn't end there.

In a newly-published conversation with Pierce Simpson of Complex, the 36-year-old shooting guard/small forward speaks honestly about what he thinks was an unfair finish to his NBA career, opining that he has more to give as a player. Simpson asks the 6'6" wing about whether he thinks the league has blackballed him for reasons beyond his contributions on the hardwood.

“Yeah, 100 percent," Smith, who has never officially retired, said of this theory. "Anybody can sit here and tell you that that’s a fact.”

Simpson speculates that Smith's infamous late-game gaffe during the first game of the 2018 NBA Finals could be a cause for teams' reticence to bring in the two-time champion. 

At his peak, Smith was a stellar 3-and-D role player on several deep playoff teams with the Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks, and Cavaliers. He played for parts of five seasons with Lakers All-Star LeBron James.

He joined the 2019-20 Lakers at the tail end of the team's regular season, appearing in just six games and averaging career lows in points (2.8), rebounds (0.8), and assists (0.5) in just 13.2 minutes a night.

Smith was subsequently a part-time deep-bench role player for L.A. throughout the team's postseason run, suiting up for just 10 of the team's 21 games and averaging 7.5 minutes. Hierarchically, he had not been able to carve out real rotation run on a title team. Despite Smith's grievances now, his NBA tenure coming to a close seems to have had more to do with his on-court output than anything else.

Smith sports more robust career averages of 12.4 points, 3.1 rebounds, 21. assists and 1.0 steals a night.

Just because Smith's NBA career may be finished, that doesn't mean his basketball playing days need to be.

During the 2011-12 lockout-shortened season, Smith took his talents overseas, inking a single-season contract with CBA club the Zhejiang Golden Bulls, where he averaged 34.4 points, 7.4 rebounds, 4.1 dimes, and 2.5 steals a night, making a Chinese Basketball Association All-Star team and emerging as the league's leading scorer. A return to the CBA could make sense, assuming he wants to take a break from his pursuit of an undergraduate degree in liberal studies.

Smith, who was selected with the No. 18 pick in the 2004 draft straight out of high school, is currently enrolled as a student at North Carolina A&T State University, where he's rocking a 4.0 GPA and playing for the school's golf team.