Who knew J.R. Smith on a bum knee was this good. I guess probably not the Denver Nuggets, but boy the Chinese caught on. On Dec. 2 Smith dropped 52 points on some team by the name of Bayi. But he didn’t just drop 52 points. He grabbed 22 rebounds, made 7 steals and had 4 assists.
These kinds of numbers don’t exist in the NBA, so Smith has to be happy he’s been so successful in China, marginally. He’s not among the top 10 scorers in the Chinese league he’s in, but managed to real off 52 in this specific game.
But given the fact that Smith was playing on a bad knee, or so we are told, it’s pretty impressive. You wonder why he doesn’t take games over like this in the NBA.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like he will be able to soon. Yes, the NBA is back, but players like Smith and Kenyon Martin may not be back in the league this year. They’re so smart that their Chinese contracts wont allow them to go back to the NBA during this year. There was no clause, like Kobe Bryant said he’d have, that says they can go back to the NBA if it ended the lockout. Well, it did end.
For now, Smith will be scoring his 52 points in a Chinese league and Martin will be doing whatever he’s doing somewhere in China, too.
