Washington Wizards power forward Jason Smith began his first season in Washington slowly. However, as the season wore on, he became one of the better bench pieces on the team, and surprised players, coaches, and fans, with his athleticism and outside shooting. Washington’s biggest need is to improve its bench, and Smith making specific improvements this offseason could go a long way towards meeting that goal.
Basic Stats: 5.7 PPG (52.9 FG%, 47.4 3P%), 3.5 RPG, 0.7 BPG, 14.4 MPG
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be posting individual player reviews for the guys that ended the season in a Washington Wizards uniform. We’ started yesterday with the youngest player on the team, Kelly Oubre Jr. Today we continue with the second oldest, Jason Smith.
After the Washington Wizards couldn’t sign a max-level player in the 2016 offseason, like Kevin Durant or Al Horford, they set their sights on building a bench that could contend. They signed three big men in Andrew Nicholson, Ian Mahinmi, and Jason Smith.
While Smith was originally expected to play few minutes at both backup bigs positions, injuries to Mahinmi, poor play from Nicholson and his eventual trade, and foul trouble from Markieff Morris, led to Smith playing more minutes.
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Of course, the bench ended up failing for a variety of reasons, but that wasn’t all Smith’s fault.
Despite an extremely poor start to the season, he rebounded to play a key role for the team.
Unlucky for the Wizards, his poor start aligned exactly with many other players’ poor starts.
Some of the play seemed like unfamiliarity fitting with a new team, but some numbers were just bad.
In 14 November games, Smith shot 34.8% on his 46 field goal attempts. He also, attempted a total of 3 three-point attempts in October-January, leaving us to assume he was not a threat to stretch the floor.
He increased his points per game average during every month from October to March, beginning at 2 PPG, and finishing at a respectable 8.1.
The biggest improvement of course, was his three-point shooting. Not only did he shoot more threes, he made an extremely high percentage of them.
Smith finished the regular season shooting 47.4% on threes! He took 78 during the regular season, which was four more than the number of games he played. In March alone he took 40. Compare that stark contrast to the three he took between October and January mentioned earlier.
As the season wore on, and he made more and more threes, I still found myself yelling for him to pass instead of shoot the three, but he has certainly shown that he can handle at least one to two attempts a game. Of course we don’t want him thinking he’s Ryan Anderson, but Smith seems pretty humble with his offensive approach.
Defensively he left a lot to be desired. He was forced to play more minutes at center because of injuries, and the Wizards really lacked any semblance of rim protection when he was on the court.
Considering the athleticism we saw from him on offense, it was somewhat surprising. Then again, there is a difference between catching a pass, taking two dribbles, and dunking versus jumping straight up to challenge a shot attempt.
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Heading into next season, Smith should continue to work on his shooting and quickness. He surprised fans with both his shot making abilities and his athleticism, but still has obvious room for improvement.
Assuming the Wizards don’t trade Marcin Gortat or Mahinmi, Smith will play minutes mostly at power forward. At PF, he will be tasked with doing more switching, meaning his lateral quickness needs to be higher.
Starting last season so slowly brings up questions of how his summer workout program prepared him for the NBA season. Was it too light, and he needed game action to fully get into shape? Was it too hard, and Smith was fatigued early?
It’s also entirely reasonable that joining a new team, with a new coach, held him back, just as it did many other Wizards. Hopefully, to start next season we see the Jason Smith from the second half of this season.
Grade: C+
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The team will need a more consistent Smith in 2017, and one who can provide more defensive intangibles. He will have a big opportunity to change the image of the team’s bench, so we hope he’s prepared.