J.R. Smith's Career Takes Unexpected, Welcome Turn with 2015 NBA Finals Trip

You'll forgive J.R. Smith for savoring his podium moment after the Cleveland Cavaliers punched their ticket to the NBA Finals on Tuesday.

He wasn't supposed to be here, and maybe photo documentation helps him cope with the surreality of the past few months. Either that, or Smith is just profoundly happy with the turn his career has taken.

The grin, memorialized on his Instagram account, would seem to indicate it's the latter:

Smith has all the reason in the world to smile.

He escaped a sinking ship via a midseason trade from the scuttled New York Knicks, where he was playing in games with few stakes and fewer quality teammates. For a player like Smith—who's at his best when the crowd is engaged, the energy is high and the environment is frenetic—the doomed air hovering over Madison Square Garden was a bad fit.

Flash forward to Smith checking out of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals to raucous cheers and heartfelt hugs from head coach David Blatt, and the contrast is startling.

Per Marc Berman of the New York Post, Smith had to take a moment to appreciate the total turnaround, and he found a sympathetic soul in Iman Shumpert, who made the New York-to-Cleveland expedition with him:

"

It's unreal. I came out of the game, and I gave Coach [David Blatt] a hug, gave [LeBron James] a hug, and all these guys. When I looked at Shump, and I just looked in his eyes and see where we came, where we started from. My mom was on the court when all the confetti and stuff was coming down. She's like, talk about starting from the bottom, and now we are here.

"

The ride to this point wasn't always smooth, and it's easy to forget that the Cavaliers were just 19-16 when they acquired Smith...and then lost four straight games upon his arrival. Initially, Smith might have felt like he'd been liberated from one bad situation and conscripted into service in another.

But things were different in Cleveland than they were in New York—in ways beyond the lack of 24/7 extracurricular distractions, which Smith has cited as a reason for his improved play. There was also substantial talent on hand.

The only real task was getting it to mesh.

Tony Dejak/Associated Press

Cobbled together quickly over the summer and shaken up by the addition of three rotation pieces in January, it took the Cavs a while to figure things out. But everyone eventually found his role, and once Smith settled into his—which turned out to be that of a highly specialized three-point shooter—his play took off.

The off-the-dribble heaves didn't totally disappear, and the flashy finishes showed up every once in a while. But for the most part, Smith embraced a specific dimension of his game and ran with it. His increased effectiveness during the regular season and the playoffs was tied directly to his outside shooting.

Smith took a significantly larger percentage of shots from long range after leaving the Knicks, jumping from 35.9 percent to 66.7 percent, per Basketball-Reference. And in the playoffs, he's taking over 70 percent of his shots from deep.

It's no surprise his true shooting percentage has climbed as well.

We've seen the occasional boneheaded play, like when Smith got himself suspended for two games after drilling Jae Crowder in the face during Game 4 of the Cavs' first-round series against the Boston Celtics:

And we still get the occasional confidence-trumping-logic comment, via NBA on TNT:

But this version of Smith is now consistently offsetting the negatives that used to define his career with the positives that only occasionally redeemed it. Bad J.R. is still in there somewhere, but Good J.R. has obscured him more often than not.

Smith gets credit for his turnaround. He's the guy playing hard and making shots.

But just as much praise belongs to Cavs general manager David Griffin, who pulled the trigger on a risky trade.

James gets some credit as well—not just for being the guy who so often sets Smith up for those threes, but as a larger organizing presence on Cleveland's roster. Having a player like James, an unquestioned superstar who controls games like few others, imparts confidence and calm to everyone involved.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

He's the steadying force players like Smith need: a committed, lead-by-example winner with a track record everyone has to respect. More than that, he's the guy players like Smith are loath to disappoint.

James is the truly rare franchise talent who makes everything (and everyone) else fall in line.

Thanks to him, Smith is only one step away from completing a journey nobody ever expected he'd take. And wherever your loyalties lie, some part of you has to be rooting for Smith to succeed.

Partially because everyone loves a redemption story, and partially because a world in which Smith is an NBA champion holds so many delightful possibilities, like this one, from Russ Bengtson of Complex:

Good times.