“That’s a Fact”: JR Smith Reveals That He Was ‘100%’ Blackballed By the NBA After His 2018 NBA Finals Disaster

From 2014 through 2018, the Cleveland Cavaliers enjoyed an incredible run, making it to the NBA Finals four times and winning it once. With LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Kyrie Irving at its core, the Cavaliers squad was unstoppable. Former NBA shooting guard JR Smith was one of the special pieces they had to aid them along the road.

Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals featured one of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ most infamous moments in franchise history. We saw this in Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals on May 31st, which was four summers ago. Undoubtedly one of the craziest NBA Finals experiences ever.

JR Smith
Credits: People.com

JR Smith, a former Cavaliers player, had a chance to win that game with a few seconds left in regulation, but he missed it. In that series against the Golden State Warriors, the Cavaliers were tremendously outmatched, and a victory in Game 1 would have been essential.

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JR Smith feels he was blackballed by the NBA

“Despite all of that, it seems that JR Smith has been remembered only for his worst moment on the floor, as his Game 1 blunder in the 2018 NBA Finals seems to play in perpetuity,” Pierce Simpson of Complex wrote.

“A moment that has followed J.R. throughout the rest of his tenure in Cleveland, throughout another championship — this time with the [Los Angeles] Lakers — and to his sudden exile from the league. Something he feels was deeper than just his play. When asked if he feels he was blackballed from the NBA, J.R. was as candid as he can be.”

“Yeah, 100 percent,” JR Smith says. “Anybody can sit here and tell you that that’s a fact.”

Undoubtedly, that is an intriguing perspective. That holds true in particular given that Smith’s career continued beyond that season. The next season, he appeared in 11 games with the Cavaliers until the two sides split ways. JR Smith started 61 of the 80 games he played in during the 2017–18 season and was an adequate supporting actor.

JR Smith scored 8.6 points per game on a 40/37% split. When you consider that 4.8 out of his 7.4 FGA were threes in total, those numbers aren’t all that horrible. The team could not win with him since he was such a bother on the field, and at this stage, his underwhelming performance was evident.

Although Smith believes the NBA intentionally singled him out, it is more possible that he just lost too much of what made him a successful player as he grew older.

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