To understand where J.R. Smith is right now, one has to understand where he’s been.
Early on during the Lakers’ time in the bubble, the realization seemed to hit him. As he sat in his hotel room talking to teammate Danny Green about his emotional state over the nearly two years it’s been since he suited up in an NBA game, Smith started to shift his gaze, looking off into the distance as if to reminisce about how far he’d come just to be in the hotel desk chair he was currently occupying in the Gran Destino resort at Disney World.