- JR Smith and the LA Lakers sign a deal.
- The former NBA champion would reunite with LeBron James and attack another title.
- He is supposed to replace Avery Bradley, who decided not to play due to health concerns.
- The Lakers didn’t want to look for a replacement for Dwight Howard.
Smith Joins the Lakers
JR Smith and the Los Angles Lakers officially signed a deal that would keep the veteran guard with the team until the rest of the season. This is an expected outcome, and because the purple and gold needed to fill in the blank spot at the shooting guard position.
They recently found out that one of their important players in the rotation, Avery Bradley won’t participate in the NBA restart due to family matters. Allegedly, Bradley’s closest ones are concerned about his health status.
Yet, the Lakers’ are suggesting that Smith won’t be replacing Bradley, but instead, be the player he was before.
“We’re not going to ask him to come in and be Avery Bradley,” Lakers’ head coach Frank Vogel said. “He’s going to come in and be J.R. Smith. He’s going just to fill that position more than fill that role… J.R. is going to come in and help fill that need, but we have a lot of guys in that position that can do the same.”
Smith had a workout with the Lakers in February this season, but back then, Vogels decided to sigh Dion Waiters, who is also LeBron’s former teammate, from the time these two played in Miami.
The former NBA champion, who won the title with the Cavaliers back in 2016, didn’t play a single game since late 2018. After LeBron left the Cavs, the team started to fall apart, and Smith didn’t want to be a part of it or follow the organization’s new philosophy.
He raised his voice against tanking, and suddenly stopped playing during the middle of the season, before being released at the end of the same. Ever since he didn’t have a team.
Vogel didn’t hide that he consulted LeBron when it came to the decision of whether to sign Smith or not.
“That was a factor, his familiarity with LeBron,” Vogel said. “The way we’ve built our team around LeBron, there’s a lot of similarities to the way they built their team in Cleveland.”
Lakers Waiting on Howard
Dwight Howard still didn’t confirm his participation at the restart, and for now, his status remains unclear. Lakers’ coach stressed out that the team and their player are communicating on a daily basis, and that they want won’t remove him off the list regardless of his decision about coming to Orlando.
Howard is in Georgia with his family and is following all the safety procedures. He had a tragedy back in March once the mother of his six-year-old son David died, following an epileptic seizure. That happened in Calabasas, California, and Howard now takes care of his son.
