Dennis Smith Jr. wasn’t on my exclusion list (the list of players too good for my channel) to start last year, but a handful of good performances right at the beginning of the season quickly put him there. I figured, as any sane person would, that he was quickly improving on an already pretty-good rookie campaign, and that he would be averaging 20 in short order. Instead, he regressed. Hard.
Actually, he wasn’t really on the exclusion list, more like the “my standards for him getting a video are way too high for him to reach at this point but I don’t want to adjust those standards because that would mean more work for me” list. Which isn’t really a list at all. More like a state of being.
Once he got traded to the Knicks for some big softie Euro whose name I can’t remember right now, he had a nice stretch of performances (at least stat-wise, the Knicks were busy losing basically all their games at that point), leading me to boldly declare that we were now in the “DSJ Era” of Knicks basketball.
That era is probably over before it really got started. DSJ has been really bad to start this season, badness compounded by some sort of death in his family and then compounded again by him getting booed mercilessly by Knicks fans. It got to the point where I, an emotionless highlight-making automaton, actually felt a little bad for him. Happily, it sounded like Knicks fans were cheering him this game, and he actually hit some shots for once, so things are looking up. China, sorry, you’re going to have to wait. DSJ’s NBA career isn’t over yet!