Smith may ditch NBA for big payday in China

J.R. Smith is reportedly close to giving up the 2011-12 NBA season in order to play in China for nearly $3 million. (Albert Pena/Icon SMI)

Nuggets guard J.R. Smith is set to be an unrestricted free agent when the league resumes business, which would in theory set him up for a payday of more than $3 million per season. That’s one reason it’s so interesting that Smith is reportedly close to signing to play a year in China for a little more than $3 million.

Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski reports that Smith is nearing a deal with Shanxi of the Chinese Basketball Association, the same league where Wilson Chandler, Smith’s teammate in Denver, will play next season, and the same league that has effectively banned NBA players from signing temporary lockout-only deals in China.

In other words, Smith is reportedly close to giving up the 2011-12 NBA season in order to play in China for nearly $3 million, the largest deal in Chinese basketball history. That comes with the same caveats as it did with Chandler. The Chinese season ends as early as March for teams that don’t advance far in the playoffs, meaning Smith could find his way onto an NBA team for the tail end of the season. And there remain rumblings that Chinese teams will get around the ban on temporary contracts by agreeing to (wink-wink) release NBA players when the lockout ends.

Still, this is a really interesting decision from Smith, and one that could hurt the Nuggets. It’s easy to say Smith could earn well north of $3 million per year in his next NBA deal, but once you start looking at the teams that are guaranteed some cap space, you begin to question that assumption pretty fast. Some of those teams (the Nets, the Clippers) may prefer to preserve that cap space for the summer of 2012, and others either don’t project to have all that much space or don’t have a real need for a three-point gunner like Smith. Under the old system, teams over the cap (like the Bulls, starved for wing scoring and shooting) could have offered Smith nearly $6 million via the mid-level exception, but we have no real idea now whether the mid-level will exist in the next CBA.

And it’s fair to ask what Smith will be worth in a stingier NBA. He’s a great outside shooter and an underrated ball-handler who can toss a slick pocket pass on a pick-and-roll; the Nuggets have scored much more efficiently with Smith on the floor in each of the last three seasons, and the stat-tracking service Synergy Sports lists him among the top 100 players in points per possession on shots taken via almost every play type — isolations, pick-and-rolls, spot-up chances and coming off screens. But Smith is prone to some awful shots, and his defense is a mess. Synergy ranked him as one of the very worst defenders in the league last season; he can get lost running around screens, gambles a lot and has a tendency to over-help and leave shooters open.

The Nuggets might actually make the most sense for Smith. They could have some cap space, depending on a lot of variables, and if they don’t, the new CBA could likely include some form of Bird Rights that allow a team to go over the cap to re-sign its own players. And with Chandler already gone, the Nuggets are starting to look a bit thin on the wing. Arron Afflalo, a restricted free agent, should nail down the starting two-guard spot if the Nuggets can keep him, but rookie Jordan Hamilton is the only other two-guard set to be on the roster as of now. George Karl is a flexible guy, and he’ll likely play Andre Miller and Ty Lawson together some (as he did last season with Lawson and Raymond Felton), but Denver could use another guard.

But even in the nightmare scenario in which the Nuggets were Smith’s only suitors under a very restrictive new CBA, it would still be a safe bet that Smith could get more than $3 million per season somewhere in the NBA. So what’s he doing risking injury in China and putting off his NBA free agency a year? Perhaps he’s worried about that nightmare scenario. Maybe he has negotiated one of those lucrative merchandising deals agents have mentioned, or he assumes becoming a star in China is long-term financial boon. Maybe he’s one of those idealists who think the union might gain some leverage if more players can sustain themselves through the fall and winter by earning cash overseas.

His agent, Leon Rose, did not return a message seeking comment today.