In the movies, Hickory High learns to begrudgingly pass the ball along the picket fence as Norman Dale insists, makes those four passes before looking to shoot, gets the ball to Jimmy Chitwood and everyone lives happily ever after because everyone listened to the coach.
On television, Carver High learns the value of taking advantage of the fact that nobody can guard Coolidge from coach Ken Reeves, so even though Thorpe and Haywood would rather do the Pearl-and-Clyde routine, they agree (and so does Salami, however reluctantly) to feed the big fella, and everyone lives happily ever after (well, except for poor Curtis Jackson) because everyone listened to the coach.
In the NBA, J.R. Smith goes to a club called 1Oak.
And the message he delivers to everyone — to his coach, to his commissioner, to his teammates, and to fans who used to adore him and now revel in his comeuppance to a degree that’s almost unprecedented — is this: Bleep you.
This is a picture from 1Oak, taken either late Thursday night or (more likely) early Friday morning, and you see what’s going on here. That’s J.R. Smith, freshly benched for behaving badly, freshly fined for once trying to untie an opponent’s shoe and for once pretending he was about to untie another opponent’s shoe — and he’s … well, it sure looks like he’s attempting to untie some fellow club-goer’s shoe for kicks and giggles.
Now, it’s true that we sometimes try to transfer the rules of actual cathedrals to our secular basilicas like Madison Square Garden, we sometimes take ourselves (and the athletes, and the games they play) too seriously, we don’t allow for mirth and humor, have little patience for things that make normal people smile. All true. All fair. All worthwhile talking points.
But this is different, because Smith is different, because he is a player who has amassed more than $900,000 in fines across a nine-year NBA career, who somehow was fined a third of the $3 million salary he earned during a brief sojourn in China during the lockout of 2011-12, and who had just been fined $50K for ignoring the league’s warning that untying opponents’ shoes isn’t a good idea.
Clearly some people can’t be shamed into doing the right thing, can’t be guilted into doing the right thing. And maybe this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, not long before he ventured out into the night, after he’d played zero minutes in the Knicks signature win of the year, 102-92 over the defending-champion Heat, this is how he had described his frolic through the land of ShoelaceGate:
“It’s funny because the first time it was done, everybody thought it was hilarious. And the second time it was done, it wasn’t even done. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. I’m not going to fight it. We play hard, we win, I’m happy. If we play hard and lose, I’d have something to say. As long as we keep winning, I’m fine.”
Of course he was fine. When you are unburdened by a conscience, when doing the right things is explicitly defined by doing exactly what you choose to do the second you choose to do it, it’s forever fine.
Which is why he’s forever fined.
Which is why the Knicks have to extend this unofficial exile a while longer, Saturday night in Philadelphia, Monday at the Garden, next week in trips to Charlotte and Indianapolis. It should be easier now that there’s evidence that the team is better off without him, that Tim Hardaway Jr. has emerged as a better option (and certainly a better citizen) anyway. And once the Knicks get whole again — when Tyson Chandler’s lungs get better, and Pablo Priogioni’s toe and Metta World Peace’s knee — it won’t even matter that the Knicks are short-handed.
It is the Knicks’ burden that they signed Smith to an untradeable contract, and pay him they will, and pay him they must, and if signing the checks every first and 15th of every month is galling, well, maybe it will matter next time to measure a player’s character every bit as much as his potential.
For now, you sit him. You know what that does?
It sends the same message back. Bleep you, too.