By joining the Wizards, Ish Smith is now playing for his eleventh franchise. He needs to add just one more team to his collection before he’ll share the record for most teams played with in an NBA career, a record he would share with NBA luminaries Chucky Brown, Jim Jackson, Tony Massenburg, and Joe Smith.
Since Ish is only 31 years old, and still seems to be a decent backup point guard, I feel like it’s almost a guarantee that he plays for at least one more team. The only way it doesn’t happen is if the Wizards really like him and decided to keep him as a long-term backup for John Wall (RIP in peace). If Ish plays out the rest of his career in Washington, that would be cool because it would be just the second time that a team really committed to him (the first time was his previous stint in Detroit). But it would also be not cool because then he wouldn’t even get to be co-holder of that record we were talking about earlier.
Now I’m thinking even further ahead. It would be easy for Ish to play for two more teams. Really easy. Then he would have played for thirteen teams and he would be the only player in NBA history to have done that. Would the NBA give him a trophy for that, as recognition of his ability to excel (or at least play somewhat decently) in any situation that he gets thrown into?
If the NBA doesn’t award such trophies, I’m sure I can whip something up. At worst, I can just mail him the bowling trophy I got when I was in fourth grade and my bowling team teammates carried me to the championship while I was regularly rolling in the fifties and sixties.