No more soup for you Smith ... to throw
J.R. Smith’s soup choice remains unknown, and so do the ingredients that steamed him so much he threw a bowl of soup at assistant coach Damon Jones.
Smith was suspended one game by the Cleveland Cavaliers, and Saturday the temperamental guard addressed the latest drama in what has been a tumultuous season for the three-time defending Eastern Conference champions.
Asked what he could share about the soup spat, Smith was as cold as gazpacho. “Nothing,” he said. And as for the kind of soup he flung?
“Honestly,” he said Saturday after the shootaround. “I don’t even remember.”
Smith, who served his onegame ban Thursday against Philadelphia, refused to say if he agreed with the discipline. He said he spoke with his teammates about what happened but not with Jones, a former NBA player who has been on Tyronn Lue’s staff fortwo seasons.
“It’s not really my call,” Smith, 31, said on the merits ofhis punishment.
“More than anything, I talked to my teammates about it, everybody seemed cool. We moved on from it as a team, so whether it warranted a suspension or not, that’s not my job. I’m just hereto play basketball.”
Because of Smith’s volatile reputation and shootfirst-ask-questions later playing style, his soup throwing tantrum led to a social-media storm Friday as Twitter filled with posts about him and his possible soup choice.
Smith was amused — to a point.
“Some of them were actually pretty funny,” he said. “I understand that everything I do is going to have a meme or whatever behind it.
“That’s just part of the day and age we live in.
“If this was 15 years ago, nobody would have even knew.”
Rockets
Eric Gordon scored 29 points off the bench, James Harden had 26 points and 10 assists, and the host Houston Rockets outlasted the Boston Celtics, 123-120, Saturday night to extend their winning streak to a season-high 15 games. Houston’s winning streak ties the second-longest in the franchise’s history. It was accomplished twice in Hakeem Olajuwon’s tenure in the 1990s and trails only a 22-game run the Rockets had inthe 2007-08 season.
Warriors
Stephen Curry scored 28 points, including 15 in the final seven minutes of the first half after returning from an ankle injury, and Golden State beat Atlanta Friday night, 114-109, for its fifth consecutive victory.
Curry turned his right ankle and left the game in the first quarter. He returned for his high-scoring second period before returning to the locker room for good in the third. The Warriors said it was a “tweaked right ankle.” Maybe he wanted to make sure he could walk Saturday in his golf shoes. Sources said that Curry and teammate Klay Thompson were scheduled to play Saturday at Augusta National Golf Club. Afterwards, they were going to take a private plane backto the Bay Area.