Former NBA Champ J.R. Smith Booked Into Texas Jail on Family Violence Assault Charge

Former NBA champion J.R. Smith, who has won two titles before going back to college to play golf and study, has been arrested in Texas on a family violence charge.

According to Hunt County jail records obtained by TMZ, Smith has been charged with assault causing bodily injury and family violence. On Tuesday morning, Smith, 40, was still held at the Hunt County Detention Center because no bail has been set yet.

Authorities have not revealed details about the incident or the victim. As of now, it is unknown whether Smith had a lawyer to speak on his behalf. Hunt County, where the county seat is Greenville, is located 50 miles northeast of Dallas.

If this is the first time Smith is charged with this offense in Texas, the charge is a Class A misdemeanor, which carries one year in county jail and a maximum fine of $4,000. If there is a previous family-violence conviction, then the charge becomes a third-degree felony. Moreover, if the assault involved strangulation or suffocation, then it is a felony in any case.

Earl Joseph Smith III entered the NBA directly from high school after the New Orleans Hornets selected him 18th overall in the 2004 NBA draft. During his career, he averaged 12.4 points per game playing for the Hornets, New York Knicks, and Denver Nuggets.

In 2013, he won the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award with the Knicks, and in 2016 and 2020, he became an NBA champion playing with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers, respectively, before retirement.

Smith is best known for a mistake in the first game of the 2018 NBA Finals. He got a rebound off a missed free throw with the score tied and 4.7 seconds remaining, thinking Cleveland was leading, and ran down the clock before passing the ball to George Hill. The Cavaliers then lost in overtime and were swept by Golden State.

He was accepted into North Carolina A&T in Greensboro in 2021 right after winning the NBA championship with the Lakers, and he also played on the Aggies’ golf team. Smith had to request athletic eligibility from the NCAA, and the organization granted it. He earned a 4.0 GPA in his first year of college and became the university’s Academic Athlete of the Year.

Former teammate of Smith, LeBron James, made a four-part series called “Redefined: J.R.” A documentary called Smith, released on Amazon Prime Video in 2023, showed Smith’s approach to studying and playing golf at the university.

Smith received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Applied Cultural Thought and graduated on May 9. As he neared graduation, he said the university saved him when he was falling apart. Speaking to ESPN, Smith said he plans to earn a master’s degree and become an athletic director one day.

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Previously, Smith has had legal problems. He pleaded guilty to reckless driving as a result of a car crash that happened in June 2007 in Millstone Township, New Jersey, and took the life of his passenger, Andre Bell. He served 24 days in prison and was suspended for seven NBA games. In 2012, he was arrested in Miami Beach, Florida, for failing to appear in court after being cited earlier for operating a motor scooter without a license.