On May 31st, 2018, J.R. Smith made the biggest mistake of his basketball career. On May 31st, 2020, some “motherfucking white boy” in Los Angeles made the biggest mistake of his life: smashing the windows of J.R Smith’s car.
In a video taken of the incident in medias res, the man is curled up on the ground while Smith stands over him and repeatedly kicks him. Eventually, the man scrambles to his feet and scurries off, but not before Smith delivers one final punch to the face.
“When the footage comes out and you all see it, I chased him down and whooped his ass,” Smith explained in a later video. “He broke my window. This ain’t no hate crime, I ain’t got no problem with nobody. Nobody ain’t got no problem with me. It’s a problem with the motherfucking system. That’s it … He didn’t know whose window he broke.”
Before the fight, Smith participated in the anti-police brutality protests in L.A. that have erupted in response to George Floyd’s murder. Smith posted a picture on Instagram from the march and was tagged in another one by Jordan Clarkson, his former Cleveland Cavaliers’ teammate.
Although Smith body-bagged the ruffian near Fairfax (where the protests largely took place), it’s unclear if the man was linked to the protests in any way.“Broke my shit,” Smith said. “This is a residential area. There are no stores over here. No, none of that shit.”
At least the guy wasn’t wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
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