The day after Dennis Smith Jr.’s spectacular Sunday performance, the Knicks’ potential point guard of the future was slated to go on a food-shopping date. And it wasn’t just any food-shopping date.
Knicks coach David Fizdale had himself a talk with Smith on Saturday after he benched him in the fourth quarter of Friday’s first game out of the All-Star break.
The lengthy player-coach discussion centered on nutrition, Fizdale advising him to get into better shape and rely more on the club’s dietician.
Whatever Smith ate in those 24 hours surely worked. On Sunday night, Smith had fans less worried about Kyrie Irving’s summer decision after a 19-point, 13-assist, zero-turnover outing in the Knicks’ home-losing-streak-busting 130-118 win over the Spurs.
After Monday’s practice, Smith was headed to the grocer with the team’s nutritionist, Erika Whitman, and lauded Fizdale for his man-to-man chat.
I’m mostly just trying to see if a new post will allow us to comment again.
In any event, when the Knicks traded for Dennis Smith Jr., I have no real beef with the guy, I just assumed he was trade bait because the team seemed intent on acquiring some big name guys this offseason and it seemed like one of those guys would almost certainly be a point guard, so it didn’t seem like Smith had much of a future here (for better or for worse) unless the Knicks struck out on all the big free agents. However, he has shown enough that I could see him having a real role on the team even if they do sign Kyrie Irving.
Good for him. Plus, he’s a whole lot of fun to watch. He’s not really all that close to being a good point guard, but he’s at least generally trending in the right direction, which is nice to see! Plus, of course, he is so damn fun to watch!