I always complain when I have to include a player’s steals in a highlight video. Always. The complaining is like the never-ending wails of my kitty Japurri Purrker when I get distracted by highlight videos and forget to feed him. I complain as much as I do because steals in the NBA are considerably more arbitrary than, say, field goals and rebounds, so there’s like a 50% chance for any given steal I look at to be one of the following: a.) not a steal, b.) not stolen by the player who allegedly stole it, or c.) just straight up unentertaining.
Well, you don’t have to listen to me complain right now because ALL SEVEN of Dennis Smith Jr.’s steals in this game were legit. He was straight up pickpocketing the Rockets’ ball handlers like they were naive tourists in Rome. The first steal was a bit tragic because he got overexcited and coughed up the ball about five seconds after he originally stole it, but the rest of them, he was giving the Knicks free possessions with his tenacity. It’s not like the Knicks had any ability to make good use of the extra possessions that DSJ was giving them (they were down by at least 25 at one point in the fourth quarter), but you can blame that on his subpar teammates.
As Mike Breen notes at the end of this video, this is one of the few tantalizing glimpses that we have had of “Vintage Dennis Smith Jr.” this season. Vintage DSJ wasn’t anything to write home about, but he did have some impressive games from a statistical point of view. In New York he hasn’t been doing any of that. Until now. Kinda. He still only had fifteen points, so let’s not get too excited here.
Screw it! Let’s get excited! Let’s watch DSJ put together one of the most entertaining exhibitions of STEAL-BASED DOMINATION that we’ve seen this season!