Hurley intrigued by Smith’s post-NBA transition

Recent retireee, who played for UConn coach in high school, back in college

J.R. Smith spent 16 years making a fortune playing basketball and landing at the heart of some of the NBA’s most talked-about moments.

Now he’s back in the classroom for the first time since he was a member of a young Dan Hurley’s St. Benedict’s Prep basketball program in 2002-04.

“It’s cool, from a distance, just to see what he’s doing, the message that he’s sending about education,” said Hurley, who is entering his fourth season at UConn and coached St. Benedict’s in Newark 2001-10. “Life-long learner wanting to continue to grow and mature and develop as a man, intellectually. I think it’s such a beautiful message he’s sending.”

Smith, who went straight from St. Benedict’s to the NBA in 2004, has enrolled at North Carolina A&T. He has also joined the school’s golf team, making Richard Watkins his first coach at the amateur level since Hurley.

“I just loved coaching him because he had so much passion and love for basketball and he never cheated himself or our team any day in terms of how he showed up, competitively, to play, whether it was practice or game night,” Hurley said. “He always showed up. We’re both crazy passionate about basketball. And we’re both, probably, a little bit crazy. So it worked.”

Smith