As mentioned, J.R. Smith got better each month of the season. Coming off off-season knee surgery and a five-game suspension, Smith rang in the season with a combined 44.9 TS% over November and December. But as the calendar turned to the new year, Smith brought his FG% over 41.5% or higher each month and his 3P% over 39%. By March and April, J.R. vaguely resembled his 2012-13 form in which he was a fairly reliable spot-up shooter and a force driving to the rim and setting up teammates. According to Synergy, Smith shot 42.6% from deep on spot-up jumpers, averaging 1.17 ppp, 29th best in the league. And, to J.R.'s credit, spot-up shooting was his most frequent type of play on offense, even beating out his beloved isolations.
As is his wont, Smith's aggressiveness in all things "not shooting" -- rebounding, passing, defending -- came and went. But, at his best, Smith was a solid rebounder on the wings -- he averaged 4 boards per game -- and a crafty ball-handler in the pick-and-roll (3 dimes per game). According to Basketball-Reference, Smith only totaled a 111 defensive rating, but when engaged, he did a passable job sticking to his man, which was a stand-out accomplishment on a team rife with defensive collapses.
Unfortunately for the J.R. and the Knicks, his best stretch came in April, in which he averaged 23.4 points, 49.6% FG, 46.3% 3P, and 4.4 rebounds per outing, his TS% rising to 66.6% (THE DEVIL!). By this point, however, the Knicks were hardly in the playoff race, and J.R.'s production was going to waste.
What J.R. Smith Didn't Do Well
It's been well established that J.R. Smith is not the most complete player in the NBA, to put it mildly. However, here are a few things that stood out for our beloved Earl in a bad way this past season. (All of the following data comes from Synergy.)
J.R. ran isolations on 20.4% of his plays, behind only spot-ups as his most favored play this season. Unsurprisingly, those isolations were not very fruitful. J.R.'s 0.72 points per possession (PPP) on isolations ranked 162nd in the NBA. He also shot 32.8% from the field on such plays, including a paltry 21.2% from behind the arc. However, if J.R. was bad on isolation plays, he was downright awful in transition, where his 1.03 PPP ranked 218th in the association. He also drew shooting fouls on only 6.4% of his transition chances, which is actually less than the 7.9% of isolation plays on which he drew shooting fouls. The good news is that Smith's PPP both on isolations and in transition were his worst in the last five seasons and were likely depressed by his terrible start to the 2013-14 season. Hopefully a rededicated J.R. Smith can turn it around next season and make this year's isolation and transition numbers seem like a bad dream.
