Two-time NBA champion JR Smith was arrested Monday in Texas on a charge of family violence assault causing bodily injury, according to Hunt County jail records.
TMZ reported that Smith was stopped after "an automatic license plate reader flagged the vehicle he was driving and alerted officers to an active warrant."
He was then taken into custody and booked into the Hunt Country Detention Center. At this point, no additional details about the arrest have been made available.
Smith’s basketball résumé is loaded. He came straight out of high school in 2004, finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2005, and established himself over five seasons with the Nuggets. Over the course of a 16-year NBA career, he became known as a scoring spark off the bench and landed in the top five of Sixth Man of the Year voting three times.
His biggest individual recognition came in 2013, when he won Sixth Man of the Year with the Knicks. He later won championships with LeBron James and the Cavaliers in 2016 and with the Lakers in 2020.
Smith also had plenty of memorable moments along the way, though one still stands out above the rest for the wrong reason. In Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, with the score tied late, he grabbed George Hill's missed free throw but dribbled the ball out toward half court instead of putting up what could have been the game-winning shot, apparently believing the Cavs were ahead by one. The game went to overtime, Cleveland lost, and the Warriors finished off the sweep.
After his NBA days, Smith enrolled at North Carolina A&T State University and joined the golf team as a 35-year-old freshman. During four years with the Aggies, he played in seven collegiate tournaments and did well in the classroom, posting a 4.0 GPA in his first college semester and earning the school’s Academic Athlete of the Year honor in 2022.
In Other News...
Jets Suddenly Have A Real Nahshon Wright Problem In The Secondary
Nahshon Wrights start with the Jets has gone from low-key to hard to ignore. The veteran cornerback arrived on a $3.5 million guaranteed deal, but early in the season he has barely seen the field, and in a recent game he was a healthy scratch while rookie DAngelo Ponds got his first NFL action. For a team that is always trying to sort out the back end of its defense, that kind of usage says plenty about where Wright stands right now.
The bigger question is what comes next, because the Jets did not bring him in to be an afterthought. When a veteran corner is active in name only and a rookie is already getting a look, it naturally raises concerns about depth, roster construction and whether the team has another awkward cornerback situation developing. It is the sort of subplot that can linger for a while in New York, especially with the memory of former Jet Dmitri Patterson still offering a cautionary comparison. [Read more 🡒]
Jets Early Draft Returns Are Shaping One Big Makai Lemon Debate
The first month of the Jets 2026 draft class has already offered enough to start rethinking the board, especially with the front offices first-round investments at tight end and wide receiver drawing early attention. New York went with Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq at No. 16 overall and later added Indiana wideout Omar Cooper Jr. at No. 30, while USC receiver Makai Lemon went to Philadelphia a few spots ahead. With the season only a few games old, the early returns have given the Jets a workable case that their own path made sense.
Sadiqs breakout game, a 100-yard day with a touchdown, has helped steady the conversation, while Cooper has been slowed by injury but has still shown enough to remain part of the picture. Lemon, meanwhile, has had a modest start with the Eagles, and that has only sharpened the debate over whether the Jets should have gone in a different direction. For now, the team appears comfortable with how the draft board fell and how its choices have started to look. [Read more 🡒]
Jets Win Just Took On A Much Darker Meaning For Packers Fans
The Packers Week 2 loss to the Jets carried an added cost beyond the final score, because Jayden Reed is now headed to injured reserve with a neck injury suffered on the second play of that game. For Green Bay, it turns a routine early-season setback into something more serious, as one of its most important pass catchers now faces an extended absence with no return timeline attached.
Reeds absence forces the Packers to reshuffle both their roster and their game plan at a time when they were still settling in offensively. For Jets fans, the win already had the usual satisfaction of a Sunday result, but now it comes with a harsher afterglow for Green Bay, where the injury from that game has become the bigger story. [Read more 🡒]