J.R. Smith is Ready for Change

It’s been a long summer for embattled Denver Nuggets guard J.R. Smith. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail last month for causing an accident that killed his close friend, 21-year-old Andre Bell, in June of 2007. Smith was released on July 24th on the condition that he complete 500 hours of community service, but controversy struck again on August 4th when The Denver Post reported that Smith was tweeting in a way that is commonly associated with the Bloods street gang. Yahoo!’s Adrian Wojnarowski writes that time spent behind bars pushed Smith to “consider a world beyond himself”:

“Most of the time I was thinking about my daughter and her life, about what plans I have for her,” he said. “I was thinking about where I want her to go to school, where I want her to grow up. Now it was more about my family than myself. …I don’t think that I was considering other people’s feelings.”

That’s part of the reason – a lot of the reason – this Twitter story embarrassed him. His agent, Thad Foucher, had him delete the page and his 15,000 followers, but the damage was done. For so long, Smith had no use for public perception.

Even now, he still says, “I don’t care what the grownups think.” Yet, he has sometimes gone too far on the basketball floor and too far off it. Someday, he’ll have to pay for it. He’s thinking about that now. Someday, Demi will ask him all about it.

“That’s what hurts the most,” he said. “When my daughter gets to be 16 or 17, and she has a paper to do in high school on her parents and she has to go back and look at these articles about me … all these negative things.”