After getting double-digit assists in just one game this year with the Mavericks (thanks to a certain SLOVENIAN who shall remain unnamed but whose name rhymes with Pooka Non-Bitch), Dennis Smith Jr. has already gotten double-digit assists for his new team, the Knicks. Hopefully this isn’t just Reggie Jackson where he balls out for a new team for exactly half a season before turning into booty sauce. Hopefully this DSJ, the one that can make plays for his teammates as well as score, is the DSJ we get going forward. The one who averages 7 APG instead of 4 APG.
Again, a certain high-usage Slovene may have been holding DSJ back, which isn’t something that the Slovene should be sorry for, it just kind of happened that way. In Dallas, DSJ couldn’t do what he wanted with the ball. It could be argued that you don’t want him to have the ball too much, but, in any case, he didn’t have it very often, so he was forced into a “secondary scorer” role with which he was unfamiliar. The tanking Knicks have no such limitations on how he plays. If he wants the ball, he can have the ball, as far as they’re concerned.
These last two months of the season should give us a better idea of whether DSJ is going to be something special, or if he’s just Brandon Jennings 1.1 with a better in-game dunk package.