As the Cavaliers prepare for this year’s playoff run and defense of their crown, they find themselves dealing with the annual injury bug. However, J.R. Smith, who is currently recovering from a fractured right thumb, is staying busy off the court.
“Swish,” as Smith is affectionately known, and driver of Nascar’s #10 Aspen Dental car, Danica Patrick, recently sat down together to discuss celebrity interactions, relationships, and more on a recent segment of “Face 2 Face” by Draft Kings.
The two athletes went back-and-forth, pinging questions off one another.
“What’s the craziest interaction you’ve had with a celebrity or somebody on the court?,” Smith asked Patrick.
Patrick, the first woman to win a Daytona 500 pole (2013), gave a reminiscent reply.
“You know, I thought one of the things that was kind of crazy was, I think it was after the Daytona 500. I think James Franco was the one that said ‘ladies and gentleman, start your engines’ kind of thing, but he somehow kind of forgot about me, and then singled me out.”
“… Anyway, he went on TV shows after, having to talk about it. I just thought it was the most ironic and silly thing. He pointed me out separately and differently. That made a ruckus and I thought it was really silly.”
“It’s hard for things to be too crazy because it’s control, right? I don’t know if you feel the same way at a basketball game,” Patrick said as she handed the topic over to Smith.
Smith, a known ladies man in his hay-day, started his reply.
“Um, I can’t say her name, but at the time I was dating this girl — or I thought we were (dating)…”
Patrick, with a sly grin, interrupted to pry Smith for a bit more information on the mystery girl, saying: “Let’s use just first letters of a name.”
“Nah,” Smith replied with a smile. “It kind of makes it easy — gives it away.”
“Ok, so, we’re talking or whatever, and she comes to a game. Then, this other guy sits right next to her that everyone thought she was dating. I was like, that’s awkward.”
Patrick interjected again to ask Smith: “How did you feel about that?” Were you mad?
“Uh, I mean, I wasn’t mad,” Smith calmly replied. “I just didn’t know how to react. Fortunately, I played better, we ended up winning.”
Patrick, prying further into Smith’s interesting memory, asked: “Well, did you say goodbye afterwards?”
“No,” Smith replied abruptly. “Absolutely not. I mean, we were winning pretty bad so they left early.”
Patrick then asked Smith: “Who’s the coolest celebrity phone number you have?
“Well, I’m a big golfer, so I’d say Justin Johnson,” Smith replied.
Patrick then let Smith in on a little secret with regards to her coolest celebrity connection.
“I think the coolest celebrity’s phone number that I have in my phone is LeBron’s,” Patrick said as she looked directly at Smith with a smile.
As the conversation went on, the topic shifted to finances. Patrick wanted to learn more about Smith’s first NBA contract.
“What was your first contract?,” Patrick asked. “How much was it for? Because this stuff is public, right?”
Smith, reflecting on his first official deal in the NBA and the impact it had on his family, gave an insightful reply.
“Yea, it’s public,” Smith replied. “My first contract was for three million dollars. I bought my mom a house. That was the first thing I bought.”
Patrick then opened up about some of the first purchases she made after signing her first contract.
“The first thing I bought when I had some money,” Patrick thought to herself. “So, I had never bought a car before because I had always gotten them for free. The first car I ever bought was a 645i BMW convertible with red interior, black (exterior). It was, you know, cool.”
Smith, an avid car enthusiast himself, nodded in agreement, stating that those are his “favorite colors”.
“So, when I got sick of that one, because I get sick of cars after a couple of years, I thought: ‘How do I take it one step up from here?'”
“And I made this joke to some friends. I said: ‘You can get a lot of really nice cars for under two hundred grand’. But what I meant was the high-end Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s. So, I bought a (Lamborghini) Gallardo. It wasn’t new because I wasn’t making like fifty million (dollars), but I never sold it — it’s just sitting in storage.”
As mentioned before, Smith is a car enthusiast and owns a Ferrari. The smooth-shooting guard asked Patrick: “So, you don’t drive it?”
“I used to drive to the grocery store, to the airport” Patrick said calmly. “Let me tell you, it’s not very functional when you go to the airport.”
As the jovial conversation came to an end, the two motor-heads shared one final laugh over the storage space (or lack thereof) in her exotic sports car.
Two athletes, both great at their respective sports, reminiscing about candid memories of their past.