Former NBA star ready to pursue college golf

“Whenever” has become “now” for J.R. Smith.

The former pro basketball player, a frequent headliner for his shirtless celebrations after winning NBA titles with LeBron James and highly meme-able moments, is headed back to college, where he hopes to return to athletics.

Smith, who turns 36 next month, wants to join the golf team at North Carolina A&T State University and will start classes next week in pursuit of a liberal studies degree. A standout high school player in football and baseball as well as hoops in New Jersey, Smith never played in college, going straight from high school to the NBA as the 18th overall pick by New Orleans in the 2004 draft.

“Things just started trickling down,” Smith said Wednesday at the Wyndham Championship pro-am in Greensboro, N.C., “and trying to figure out if I still got eligibility and more importantly trying to educate myself to do something after basketball.

“They (scouts) always told me I could go back whenever when I was coming out of high school and this is `whenever' for me.”

Now, all he needs is NCAA clearance. Because he never attended college, “the clock never started” on his eligibility, Richard Watkins, who coaches A&T's men's and women's teams said as he watched from the gallery while Smith played. Brian Holloway, an A&T spokesman, told ESPN that the school is “just going through the normal process we would go through with any prospective student-athlete but this one is just a little different” because it has been 17 years since Smith was in high school.

Athletes generally have five years in which to complete four years of eligibility and according to NCAA rules, they are not be eligible for intercollegiate athletics in a sport if they competed on a professional team. There are no restrictions on former pro athletes who seek to compete in a different sport. Smith, a 16-year NBA player who played on championship teams with the Cavs in 2016 and Lakers in 2020 and won the league's Sixth Man of the Year award after the 2012-13 season, would bring significant attention to A&T, a historically Black school in Greensboro, N.C.

“It's a big deal for A&T,” Watkins said. “It's not very often that somebody in his position really has an opportunity to have a thought, a dream, an idea, and to be able to go ahead and move in that direction.”

J.R. Smith