The talk around the city of Cleveland has been J.R. Smith’s soup-gate — which has everyone wondering all sorts of answers, ranging from what sparked the confrontation between him and assistant Damon Jones, to what kind of soup he had in his hands before the altercation.
Smith, for one, can’t even remember what kind of soup he threw at Jones, according to Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com.
“Honestly I don’t even remember,” Smith said Saturday, in his first comments since the incident.
Though, according to Jason Lloyd of The Athletic, the soup of choice was a chicken tortilla — a nice touch of spice for drenching Jones, to make a point.
Many in media circles had fun with this revelation, as Vardon himself had shown to Cavs practice with a bowl of soup himself on Friday, just to add to the mood.
Walk into Cavs practice and leave it to my man @joevardon to be eating this for lunch pic.twitter.com/CCrDAiYwwL
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) March 2, 2018
The trolling from media members and Twitter users wouldn’t take long to rain down, as evidenced by this tweet from Oklahoma City Thunder beat writer Royce Young.
The good news is there’s only a 39.2 percent chance it actually hit Damon Jones. https://t.co/szAKGi2fTf
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) March 2, 2018
ESPN’s Zach Lowe didn’t take long to chime in with some of his usual humor.
Cavs missed a real opportunity to make history by not coming clean and just putting DNP-THREW SOUP in the box score.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) March 2, 2018
And just like everyone else, he also wanted to know what kind of soup we were talking about here.
I can't go on with my day until I find out what kind of soup it was. Everything is on hold. Cancel all my meetings.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) March 2, 2018
The 31-year-old didn’t seem convinced that this incident merited a suspension, but chose to take the high road and move forward.
“I talked to my teammates about it, everybody seemed cool,” Smith said. “We moved on from it as a team, so whether it warranted a suspension or not, that’s not my job. I’m just here to play basketball.”
Head coach Tyronn Lue said Smith would resume his usual starting duties tonight, when the Cavs face the Denver Nuggets.
