Healthy and focused, J.R. Smith could impress next season

J.R. Smith should be able to continue the stellar play he had in the 2017 playoffs and thrive for the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2017-2018 season while he’s healthy and focused.

From the end of the 2016 championship to the beginning of the 2017 playoffs, the news feed for Cleveland Cavaliers shooting guard J.R. Smith was filled drawn out contract negotiations, various injuries and the pain of having an ailing newborn daughter.

It affected his play, as he wasn’t able to catch a rhythm early on in the season and to be fair, it was the primary reason he struggled to make shots throughout the season.

Smith didn’t re-sign until nearly mid-October. A week later, Smith and his wife Jewel would announce that they were expecting another child on Uninterrupted.

Take a look at Smith’s splits from last season and he shot 32.0 percent from three-point range in October (3 games) and 32.9 percent from three in November (10 games). All in all, Smith only played in 21 games before the All-Star break and he missed significant time in January in February.

Smith did however come through with a hot December before a thumb injury against the Bucks took him out for the final week of the month. Smith shot 45.0 percent from three in December, having finally caught his rhythm. However, in January, Smith and his wife Jewel would inform the world of the sad news that their daughter, named Dakota, was born five months prematurely. As a result, Dakota would have to jump through a series of obstacles to develop properly and be taken home.

At that point, it’s hard to say Smith wasn’t having a tough time that season.

When he returned from his latest injury in March, he shot 32.5 percent from three in 13 games as he tried to reestablish that rhythm. He improved in April, shooting 35.8 percent from three in seven games.

Then, miraculously, he caught fire. Smith shot 43.8 percent from three in the first round of the playoffs, as the Cavs swept the Indiana Pacers. He shot 44.4 percent from three in the conference semifinal round, as the Cleveland Cavaliers swept their second straight opponent in the Toronto Raptors.

He then shot 46.7 percent in the Eastern Conference Finals, as the Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the top-seeded Boston Celtics in five games. In the midst of the Cavs handily beating a team many said could defeat them prior to the playoffs, Smith put up a picture on Instagram of him walking out Hillcrest Hospital with his daughter Dakota, who would be able to return home after five long months.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUeuCGADIBz/

As if it couldn’t get any better, Smith shot 58.1 percent in the 2017 NBA Finals. He was one of the lone auxiliary players to show up for the Cavs and though he started off 1-of-4 from three-point range in the first two games, he started shooting off the hip for the rest of the series, going 17-of-27 from three the rest of the way.

The pendulum has been swinging in Smith’s favor as of late.

While he’s healthy, happy and focused, the Cleveland Cavaliers should expect Smith to shoot better than 35.1 percent from three-point range, like he did in 2016-2017.

In his first season with the Cavs, he shot 39.0 percent from three. In his second season, he shot 40.0 percent.

Playing beside a point god in LeBron James and starting on a team with an offensive system that gives him the green light to launch from deep, Smith should get plenty of opportunities to prove his stats from the 2016 season were an aberration. By all accounts, they certainly look like an outlier.

One thing we do know about Smith this offseason, is that Mr. Hesi Pull-Up Jimbo himself is feeling good, putting in the work and he’s looking good.

Smith is the best three-and-D player the Cavs have and is possibly the best one they could have. With that said, he’s one of the players the Cleveland Cavaliers will rely on to make impact plays on both ends and play up to expectations, if not surpass them.

Looking back at the past two NBA Finals, they’ll likely need him to in order to win another NBA championship.

Save for Game 7 of the NBA Finals, in which his transition defense on Andre Iguodala made “The Block” possible, the Cavs won when Smith was both aggressive and efficient. In the 2017 NBA Finals, when Smith was aggressive and efficient, the Cavs had their best chance to defeat the Golden State Warriors.

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