Almost a week ago, Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman penned J.R Smith as “the new Dennis Rodman” in a tweet. Not surprisingly, Smith said at a Knicks practice that “it’s a great thing” that he’s being compared to one of, if not, the undisputed king of basketball shock value. We wonder, is Rodman right on any degree? Are these guys secretly related? Are they brothers of some sort?
I mean, Rodman’s tomfoolery resume is absolutely impeccable. There’s an antic for many types of people to choose from. A tabloid reader (like my mom) would definitely select his escapades with Madonna and his marriage to Carmen Electra, which, yes, it was longer than Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries’ marriage. Any basketball fan would pick his cameraman kicking incident and his patented around-the-clock trash talking tactics with players and refs. A fashion person would admire (or at least try to admire) his zany fashion sense with his several piercings, gauges, tattoos and hair dying schemes (never forget his Demolition Man hair). Someone that has an interest in politics (well, Americans as a general consensus) turned to his highly questionable visits to North Korea, in which he tried to act as the United States’ best diplomat. I’ll stop there; the list is endless.
Over the years, J.R Smith has adopted his own social media persona over his all-time favorites Twitter and Instagram. One of the best inside jokes within us Knick fans came out of the illustrious 2012-13 season, in which he tried to get the pipe (feels so long ago now) and calling out numerous fans after being criticized for bad performances. Calling out Kris Humphries. Beefing with Rhianna during the playoffs, gallivanting around New York City’s clubbing (not seals) scene looking to get drunk for an upcoming playoff game… the list goes on for J.R as well.
You’d think that J.R hit his antics apex that year, but last season, he raised the bar even more by getting suspended five games for violating the substance abuse policy (and, somehow, Lamar Odom found his way through the system…). Then, there was threatening Brandon Jennings in one of the weirdest Twitter beefs ever over his brother Chris (thank God that saga is over), as well as reviving his beef with Rhianna over Heat bandwagoners. The Twitter moments never stop.
The funny thing is, Rodman wasn’t the first one to make this comparison; it was actually Phil Jackson that first drew the comparison last month, in an interview with the Post’s Steve Selby. He said:
"He might be one of those guys that’s a little bit like Dennis Rodman that has an outlier kind of side to him."
The quote doesn’t really mean too much, but what it does mean is that Jackson and Rodman are somewhat on the same page when it comes to talking about J.R Smith.
The Knicks season is now a mere 7 days away and the triangle offense is going to be back in regular season action come the Knicks season opener against the Bulls. Oh wow! Look at that! Rodman played in the triangle offense and Smith is going to be playing in the triangle this upcoming season! How about that!
(If your sarcasm detector is on, then you would understand what I’m saying.)
I’m sure when Rodman left Detroit, his mainstay until 1993-94, for San Antonio (that’s when the Demolition Man hair became a thing), then Spurs coach John Lucas knew what he was getting as well with Rodman; a premier glass cleaner, if not, the best glass cleaner in the game at the time. Same with when the Bulls traded Will Perdue for Rodman in 1995-96. Phil Jackson and Jerry Krause definitely knew they were getting a mercurial personality at a low premium. Turned out the gamble paid off in the long run, right? The best regular season team came out of that year, as well as the second threepeat for Phil Jackson.
When Smith was first acquired as a free agent by the Knicks during the Linsanity season, people had to presumably think that the Knicks were getting an erratic son of a gun that had fits with keeping his cool. At that point, he hadn’t played in the NBA in a year, because he was playing in China during the lockout. And each time “bad J.R” showed up, fans jumped on him like it was no tomorrow. To paraphrase almost every New York sports radio caller:
"“Trade da bum!”"
Although Rodman has a Twitter account now, just think for a moment what Twitter would be like in the late 80s-90s in Rodman’s prime, when the Bad Boys were kings of the hardwood in the late 80s and early 90s (until MJ figured out The Jordan Rules). J.R and Rodman would probably be BFF’s on Twitter if you could compile all of their best tweets (depending on what Rodman would’ve tweeted back then, of course).
I’d like to think of J.R as Rodman on many accounts when it comes to the excessive amount of off-court antics; it’s clear that the antics coincide. But there’s a couple of caveats. 1. Is J.R as crazy and deranged as Rodman was (and still is)? And 2. Can “good J.R” show up on the court every night and play with the elevated energy level that Rodman did on most nights under the glass, in J.R’s case, on the wing and perimeter? I know, the second question is definitely cliche, but in the grand scheme of things, this cliche does apply to Smith.
Everyone should know how unpredictable J.R is on any given night. One night he can go 1-20, then he could shoot above 50% for 4 straight games, and then go back to his sloppy shooting spiel. But that was under Mike Woodson, the iso big cheese who would allow J.R to be more expressive with the way he would approach a 1v1 play. We’ll just have to wait and see what Derek Fisher‘s interpretation of the triangle holds, whether it’s Carmelo Anthony scoring more or less, Quincy Acy getting the official nod at power forward come the season opener, and, well, if J.R can get his act together for the first couple of months this upcoming season, because his overall game was six feet under the hardwood last year.
Verdict: J.R Smith is sort of like Rodman himself; the only thing that’s missing in order to be exactly like Rodman is to act like a lunatic more than being just plain stupid, as well as displaying top-draw effort on the court almost every night. If so, then maybe he’ll qualify as Dennis Rodman’s doppelganger