The late great Kobe Bryant gave a reality check to plenty of rookies over the course of his 20-year NBA career, and J.R. Smith was one of them. Smith entered the NBA straight out of high school, and he spoke about going up against Bryant during an interview with Brice Butler.
“S*** is easy to me at that time,” Smith said. “I mean, again, I was naive… But I played against Kob, that’s when I knew. It was just like, ‘Oh, no. I’m not ready.'”
Butler wanted to know what made Smith, whom the New Orleans Hornets had selected with the 18th pick in the 2004 NBA Draft, feel he wasn’t ready, and it was pretty much everything. The 40-year-old then recounted getting subbed out of a game against Bryant in his rookie season, seconds after coming on.
“We’re going through walkthrough, doing plays and s***,” Smith said. “And Byron Scott’s trying to explain the triangle and where Kob going to be at and then his moves and s***. And he kept telling me… ’cause Kob was pump faking like a mug. So, he was like, ‘Yo, he’s going to go two dribbles right, baseline. He’s going to pump fake, stay down. He’s going to pump fake again, stay down.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’
“So, we go through another play,” Smith stated. “He tell me, ‘Yeah, he going to go two dribbles right, pump fake, stay down. Pump fake, stay down, and then make him pass it out. Worst comes to worst, he’ll take a tough shot over top of you. We can live with that.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’
“We go over another play,” Smith continued. “He’s like, ‘Look, he going to,’ I said, ‘Yo, bro, if you tell me he about to go two dribbles right and pump fake and then pump fake. All right, I got it. I got it.’ [He said], ‘All right. All right. He do it and your a** go for it, I’m taking you out.’ I get in the game. I swear to God, I wasn’t in the game 9 seconds.
“When I tell you this man went two dribbles right, but the way he took his two dribbles, I’m thinking he going to the cup for sure,” Smith added. “This n***a pump fake, jump… Sub… Took me right out.”
Hornets head coach Byron Scott had briefly played with Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers and had coached against him for years. He tried to make sure this young rookie wouldn’t bite on that pump fake, but despite his repeated warnings, Smith did.
“I couldn’t even be mad, but when I tell you, I knew the move that he was doing, I knew his moves,” Smith said. “When I tell you it was like it’s game speed, and… it’s Kobe speed, but it just looks so profound. His two dribbles look like he was about to just take off. I’m like, ‘Oh hell no, I got to cut him off. I got to be there, I got to go.’… Oh, this what y’all talking about. Yeah. Man, he had like 40 that night.”
There are times when we just have to imagine what happened when players share such stories, but that’s not the case here. Here’s footage of Smith biting on that pump fake.
Heres the game pic.twitter.com/kmQolgtwP4
— Comment Warrior (@comment_warrior) June 22, 2026
Bryant didn’t get to 40 in their first meeting on Nov. 9, 2004, but he did score 31 points to lead the Lakers to a 106-98 win. As for Smith, he finished with two points off the bench. While that would have been a blow to his confidence, he still had a pretty good rookie season.
Smith averaged 10.3 points, 2.0 rebounds, 1.9 assists, 0.7 steals, and 0.1 blocks per game in 2004-05, and finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting.
