We all wanna have sex. Sigmund Freud found that out. Some so much that it because a detriment, others so little that they become cranky all day. The aftermath of sex always brings relaxation, (in my experience anyway), and for years, athletes have been testing the theory that having sex before competition is beneficial to on-field performance. My experience, which happened my senior year of high school before we got walloped by Superior, clearly did not work that well. But it is no secret that athletes everywhere are doing it for the ladies.
It is also no secret that often times high-end strippers can be bought. NBA’ers have been showing for years that they have no problem paying for strippers. I could list and link story after story of NBA’ers paying women like Jenna Shea, Kat Staacks, and Karin “Superhead” Steffens. But then there is J.R. Smith. Smith, if you are not familiar, is the most fun case study in the NBA. Last year, I investigated how he scores better on non-drinking days (it ended up being 100% true). With J.R. Smith comes hilarity, and Charlie asked me based off a tweet from Netw3rk, a Grantland contributor, to investigate if he plays better in cities with high-end strip clubs. I obliged with ease and began my investigation.
The first task was figuring out which cities indeed have the best strip clubs. Las Vegas obviously came to mind, but does not have an NBA team so it was unfortunately eliminated.[1]After a little Internet search, I found out that Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, New Orleans and Southern Florida are the other premier destinations for strip clubs in the United States.
So with a general idea of where the best clubs are, it was time to figure out if J.R. really does play better at these locations. For his career, J.R. has been scoring 13.2 points per game. With that in mind, I started compiling the games in which he not only went for 20+ points, but also did it while not shooting 500 times.[2]What I found is that over the first nine years of his professional playing career, J.R. has had 67 “big games”, or an average of seven per year. That is, by all accounts, a huge number. Seeing as that he is normally the sixth man, here is a graph depicting his big games by city:
The graph shows Denver and New York being the most frequented venues for his outbursts. J.R. played in Denver for seven seasons, which would somewhat explain why he totaled 17 of his big games there. But what I found was that a lot of his big games in Denver came after he returned home from a road trip. Now some could argue logically J.R. is going to play better at home, most players do. It is called home court advantage for a reason. But what that does not explain is why he had so many instances in which he had a great first game of the home stand, before falling back into his “average” ways.[3] And given that I was researching how J.R. performed when arriving to cities in which he could find..umm…consistent means to be comfortable[4], I thought it correlated that he often performed super well the first day back in Denver. Also, it is always a safe feeling scoring weed from your home town dealer, and we all know about Denver and we all know about JRSmith.
As for New York, it doubles as strip club city which we enjoy for the sake of the research and as of now a home court safe haven. This is also where J.R. grew up, so he should continue to pile up games while playing for the Knicks.
There have been a number of cities in which J.R. has went off one or two times, and it did not surprised me that a number of these outbursts came in cold weather cities (Cleveland, Minnesota, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia)…during the dead of winter…on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday….or non-drinking nights in “too-fucking-cold-to-leave-the-hotel” locations. This means equaling successfully focused nights of basketball (All of this is my opinion of course).
But that still leaves Phoenix and Memphis. Two cities, in which J.R. seems to be very comfortable playing in, but have no reputation as top strip club cities. Since his rookie year, J.R. has loved playing in Phoenix. I thought it was peculiar. What the hell is going on in Phoenix? That when I thought about a couple of x-factors.
Realistically the best thing that happened was discovering 40% of Smith’s big games happened in high-end strip clubs cities. Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, South Florida, and New York accounted for the location on 27 of the 67-scoring outbursts. And if that doesn’t make you a believer consider this…
The only other city that continually showed up was Memphis. Now, if “Googled”, Memphis does not come up anywhere in strip club allure. But as I looked at J.R.’s number’s I noticed that while he had four big games in Memphis between ‘04-’10, he has not had another explosion since. That’s when I found out Memphis had a law change that went into effect January 1st, 2011. The law did not only banned drinking, but also nudity at gentleman’s clubs. Juicy J no longer lives in Memphis, and J.R. Smith no longer scores a lot there. The pieces all fit together.
To me, that is the icing on the cake. Of course, unless J.R. Smith decides to confirm or disconfirm this, it will all just be one man’s speculation, but it was fun researching for what it is worth. I love J.R. Smith. And J.R. Smith seems to really love the ladies.[7]
Andrew
[1] I did check to see if JR won his only Dunk Contest at the Vegas All-Star game, but he didn’t :/ I know…. I was bummed to.
[2]Easier said then done for our main man JR sometimes.
[3]Which is still above average in NBA terms.
[4]Remember we are under the mindset that sex brings comfort and relaxation that translates into more points.
[6]Not a skank
[7] Hi Rihanna.
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