Well, that didn’t take long did it? No less than 48 hours after former Detroit Piston Josh Smith was waived by his team, there were already rumors of Josh Smith signing with the Houston Rockets. Earlier yesterday these rumors became official. As we have stated in an earlier post, Smith has a long history with All-Star Center Dwight Howard going back to their high school days in Georgia. In addition to that personal familiarity, Josh Smith, despite his sub-par performance in Detroit & increasingly worse reputation, is still clearly more talented than any player on the Houston Rockets roster excluding Howard & James Harden. For all the flak that media, fans, & analysts have given Josh Smith in this past year for his poor play, Smith is still an all-star caliber player, more than capable of being the 2nd/3rd best player on a Championship level team. Furthermore in his defense, Smith in some ways was a victim to an NBA front office making a very poor decision. There were very few people who saw the logic in the Pistons signing Josh Smith in the first place. The Detroit Pistons already invested lottery picks in Greg Monroe & Andre Drummond who are both big men. Bringing Smith along put the team & former head coach Maurice Cheeks in a Lose-Lose situation. Any team that’s interested in competing consistently has to be able to have their best player on the court playing well together. It’s impossible to do that when all three of your top players play the 4 & 5 position (Power Forward/Center). A team can get by in that scenario if they were all perimeter players. As a matter of fact there really isn’t much difference between the 2 & 3 spot (Shooting Guard/Small Ford) some head coaches even combined both of those positions and refer to them as “Wings”. The Phoenix Suns sometimes play their 3 best players on the court at the same time and they are all point guards. But when you’re a big man it’s impossible simply because of the geographic location of where big men play normally on the basketball court. But since Josh Smith, from a size & athletic standpoint could play the 3 spot (In Theory), Pistons coaches had no choice but to play him there just so he can have his best players on the court. And of course….it went horribly wrong. Smith has a ton of talent as a basketball player, but unfortunately the one thing he has never developed is his shooting & shot selection. Which in the grand scheme of things isn’t the end of the world because let’s face it, everybody can’t be LeBron James right? But since the coaches put Josh Smith in a position that brought out the worst in him, that is exactly what they got. Hence this shot chart from Smith’s 13-14 season in Detroit courtesy of Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry.
In last night’s game of the Houston Rockets vs. Memphis Grizzlies, Josh Smith kept skeptics quiet after contributing heavily in a win in overtime. Smith had 21 pts, 8 rebounds, and 3 assist (4 offensive boards), all of which played a pivotal role in showing how athletic and versatile Smith can be on the court. It’s going to be interesting to see how Smith will come into play as the season continues for a very solid Houston Rockets team.
-JRC
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