The Courtship of JR Smith

By John Canzano, The Oregonian

The pursuit of J.R. Smith, a free agent who played for Denver before going to China, offers a glimpse of what the Blazers are up against in trying to fill out their roster.
This was top-secret stuff. Big stakes. Promises. Intrigue. The stuff of an international NBA spy thriller. It was more than an hour before tip off at the Rose Garden on Thursday and I found Los Angeles Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro in the visiting coach's office, circling jersey numbers his lineup card.

I introduced myself to Del Negro. Then, told him I wasn't as interested in talking about the Blazers-Clippers game as I was talking about the other big game. You know, the one that had the Clippers coach text messaging promises to free-agent guard J.R. Smith, locked up in a do-or-die recruiting battle with the New York Knicks.

Said Del Negro: "You have my attention."

Smith, who played the last several months in China, is a free agent. The Knicks want him. The Clippers want him. They've wooed him, and offered him, and whispered so many sweet promises in his ears that one Western Conference executive characterized the battle for Smith as, "a back-biting North Carolina-vs.-Kentucky-type recruiting war."

Smith's camp, run by agent Leon Rose, will tell you that the Knicks can offer more money than the others ($2.5 million to $1.5 million) due to a salary-cap exception. And that the Knicks are promising that Smith would be the perfect complement to point guard Jeremy Lin, and give them depth. And that the Clippers are telling him he'd be perfect beside Chris Paul and Blake Griffin at Staples Center.

Things got so interesting Thursday that Smith hopped a plane from China to LAX, arriving at the airport in the late afternoon, where he was intercepted, his camp said, by a representative for the Knicks. Smith was apparently headed later in the evening to Las Vegas, and so the Knicks bought a ticket for their guy and sent him along, too. They'd apparently hoped to sign Smith at the airport bar, and I can't say I blame them after what I heard Del Negro promised Smith.

Get this: Smith was told via text message from Del Negro, in what feels like a desperate, last-ditch effort, that he'd be -- a starter -- for the Clippers.

Start? Smith?

"What I text to J.R. is between J.R. and me," Del Negro said. "We're just trying to make our team better. I think everyone on our team understands that."

I asked Del Negro if Mo Williams and Randy Foye, who started against the Blazers on Thursday, would understand. Is it a challenge, trying to keep the two guys who might be most affected from losing focus? And to that, Del Negro said, "My front office is trying to get me the best possible team."

Williams said he'd remain professional, for the record. He said: "I have to do my routine." Meanwhile, Smith tweeted Thursday that he was, "Watching the Clipper game in the airport," with the hashtag "#LoveTheUS." Also, his Twitter profile included a telling bio that read: "NYK? LAL? LAC?"

Yeah, the Lakers are in this, too. Who knows? Maybe they're offering free season-long foot massages courtesy of Kobe Bryant. (Doubt he knows it, though.)

Smith offers depth. He's athletic. He can shoot, in streaks. He's also a head case, who demanded a suite and a personal chef from the Zhejiang Chouzhou Golden Bulls when he signed. The team general manager later accused Smith of faking a knee injury to get out of playing games. And so it says a lot about the state of the NBA that the market value for such a player, imported on a Thursday from China, is somewhere north of a pro-rated $1.5 million salary.

A night like this makes me think about the Blazers' competitive disadvantage. Because even as most will see this fight over Smith a New York vs. Los Angeles thing, it's really not. This is just a pair of NBA franchises that very badly want to win. They want a player, so much so that one dispatched a lieutenant to the airport to intercept Smith and the other made an emotional appeal, and then turned the head coach loose offering a promise of playing time behind his current player's backs.

The Knicks were said to be close to a deal with Smith at press time. They had an experienced man in position, I guess. The Clippers only had promises. But in a negotiation such as this, with the teams willing to one-up each other, and Smith holding all the leverage, I'll wait to see Smith receiving a bounce pass from Lin/Paul to make the call.

There's a bigger issue buried in this recruiting battle for the Blazers, however.

Portland remains unprepared to play on the big stage next summer. Still no general manager. Still no apparent direction. No decision-maker with boots on the ground. Nobody to make promises or meet the airplane. Chad Buchanan, the acting GM, deserves the job but hasn't received it, and says he's happy in his role. So when it comes time to make a deal at the March 15 NBA trade deadline, or woo a free agent in the summer, do the Blazers even understand what they're up against?

Basically, take the hyper-competitive college recruiting process, add millions of dollars, a boatload of vanity, sprinkle with egos, remove all NCAA administrative oversight and you're halfway there.

I know Portland outdueled Sacramento for free agent Jamal Crawford in the preseason, but that was a junior varsity level competition compared to what will stand between the Blazers and what they'll covet next summer. What then? What happens when you're up against a formidable adversary, with a key player in the balance? The Knicks and Clippers went throttle-open in pursuit of Smith. Portland, being a small market team, will need to work harder and be smarter than those they battle against.

The Blazers would love to woo Gerald Wallace into exercising his one-year player option instead of turning unrestricted free agent in June, but who does the sweet-talking? Jamal Crawford is a free agent. Who makes the promises of playing time? The Blazers need a center to replace Marcus Camby. Who meets that player's plane at the airport?

It's the game beyond the games that I'm most tuned into when it comes to Portland's future.


--John Canzano
twitter.com/johncanzanobft
Catch him on the radio on "The Bald-Faced Truth," 3-6 p.m. weekdays on KXTG (750).

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