JR Smith opens up on 16 years NBA career, winning with LeBron, the Finals mistake that changed everything, Knicks, playing depressed, time in jail, heartache, Mental Health, golf and finding purpose beyond basketball

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Ryan Clark** (0:30)
JR Smith's story has never fit neatly into a box. From being a teenage phenom, drafted straight out of high school by the Hornets, to becoming one of the NBA's most electrifying players. JR lived a career filled with unforgettable highs, painful lows, and lessons that came at a cost. Today, we sit down with a man who was often misunderstood. A champion, teammate, brother, father. A man who has openly discussed living with ADHD and dyslexia, while navigating a league that celebrated his talent, but often overlooked his struggles. We talk about the New York Knicks playoff run and what that city still means to him. We revisit the 2018 NBA Finals and the game won moment that's followed him for years. Obviously, we discuss his relationship with LeBron James, winning an NBA Championship in Cleveland and the pressure that comes with playing on the biggest stage in sports. JR opens up about losing a close friend and carrying the weight of the responsibility that followed. He shares why he felt the NBA didn't always care about the depression he battled behind the scenes and how those experiences shaped the man today. In true JR fashion, we talk about life after basketball, from becoming a college golfer and competing in his first tournament against Hornets, not necessarily his opponents, to finding purpose, peace, and a new challenge beyond the game. This is a conversation about accountability, it's about growth, mental health, redemption, and learning how to move forward when the world thinks it already knows your story. Listen, I'm RC, and now JR Smith sits down with Chan, Fred, and me, and this is one of the biggest pivots.
Welcome to The Pivot, JR Smith, man, two-time NBA champion, once called a hobbyist, actually. That's what Kevin Love called you, a great hobbyist. This is Fred Taylor, Channing Crowder, I'm Ryan Clark, Pivot fam. Thank y'all for pivoting with us. I wanna ask you about that, though. There are people in the world, Odell Beckham Jr., like he can do everything. He could hoop, he could play soccer, he could play baseball. You're the same, man. You played football, baseball, ping pong, you could golf, all of these different things.
Was it hard to sort of settle down into doing one thing because you were so good at so many?

**JR Smith** (3:04)
Yeah, like for me, it was, I was, I don't know, I say it's crazy because I still say it, but like I was a football player. I considered myself a football player.
Football was like one of the sports, it was actually at one point the only sport I had a scholarship in. Once my dad and my high school coach kind of tricked me into transferring into a prep school because I didn't have the grades and I didn't really understand where I was at and not being able to go to college. Even though I had all these offers, when they tricked me and sent me to this prep school, they didn't have a football team. So it was pretty much, it was all basketball. They kind of threw all my eggs in one basket. Then once I reclassified to really get the grades, I was in bronze class and I think I was 74th or something like that in the country. Once I reclassified and did my junior year over again, I went literally in 48 hours, I went from 76th to number one player in the country.

**Channing Crowder** (4:04)
Oh wow.

**JR Smith** (4:05)
RV school, literally overnight, just started offering me for basketball. That's kind of how that went.

**Channing Crowder** (4:14)
Pat Riley says it all the time. Made the main thing the main thing, but you didn't have a main thing.
But then you went and played 16 at the highest level. Do you think if you did basketball, it would have been, you could have been better because you balled out, but because you would have been better if you had locked in.

**JR Smith** (4:34)
If I had locked in the basketball earlier?

**Channing Crowder** (4:36)
Yeah, from nine, from eight.

**JR Smith** (4:37)
No, I mean, basketball was my... I mean, I've been playing basketball since I was three, but it just so happened, like, I was just... I wasn't...