Ish Smith’s perfect 9-of-9 shooting performance, untainted by the stain of even a single missed field goal, is one of the best perfect shooting performances of this season so far. Only Dwight Howard with his 10-of-10 game a few days ago, has done better. Clint Capela, Dwight Powell, and Tony Snell (HELL YEAH TONY) have also gone 9-of-9 in a game.
But none of those dudes were perfect from the free throw line. Howard, Powell, and Capela all missed at least one free throw. Howard missed them all. Snell didn’t take one, but going 0-of-0 results in a division by zero error when you try to calculate his percentage, so I would say that he was also imperfect from the stripe. That leaves Ish alone with the rare perfect night that includes perfect free throw shooting.
Out of all the games in his long and itinerant NBA career, Smith has been perfect from the field exactly 16 times (17 with this game). But the most shots he ever made in one of those games was three. This game blows all of those games out of the water. If he had just gotten a few more assists, I would say that this is a career game for Smith. Actually, forget the assists. This IS a career game for Smith.
Despite Smith’s strong performance, I’m absolutely not going to take Drew Gooden’s advice and start calling him “Swish Smith”. There are some things that a grown man should never do, and listening to Gooden’s remarks when it comes to player nicknames is one of them.