Ex-Auburn basketball star Jabari Smith went for 33 points and scored a spectacular 3-pointer from the top of the key with 0.6 seconds left on the clock to beat the buzzer and lift the Houston Rockets past the Portland Trail Blazers during the NBA Las Vegas Summer League.
JABARI SMITH JR. WITH THE WILD TRIPLE FOR THE ROCKETS WIN!
— NBA (@NBA) July 8, 2023
WHAT A WAY TO OPEN #NBA2KSummerLeague! pic.twitter.com/qYhOWcLbvN
The marquee Sin City moment of the 2023 Summer League’s first night in Nevada — and the 33 minutes of basketball from Smith before that shot — has Auburn Daily’s Andrew Stefaniak thinking that the former Auburn basketball No. 1 option could be “the next big thing in the NBA” moving forward.
“What a big game for the former Auburn Tiger to prove he’s going to be the next big thing in the NBA,” Stefaniak said. “Smith looked confident and absolutely took over the second half of this game. The big man out of Auburn is going to put the league on notice this season.”
Ex-Auburn basketball star Jabari Smith plays spoiler in Scoot Henderson’s NBA debut
What made Smith’s shot even sweeter for Auburn basketball fans was that it spoiled the debut of the No. 3 pick in the 2023 NBA draft and a former Tigers target who spurned the Plains for the G-League instead, Scoot Henderson. Henderson, as 247Sports’ Travis Branham wrote, was a lock for AU had he decided to play college ball.
“Had Henderson played college basketball, he was a lock to suit up for Bruce Pearl and the Auburn Tigers,” Branham wrote. “In fact, Henderson had actually silently committed to Auburn behind the scenes in the spring of 2021 before the talks of reclassifying and going pro had really surfaced.”
Of course, Summer League results aren’t the be-all, end-all, but Smith’s shot can certainly be spun into a moral victory for the Auburn Family after a not-so-successful week on the recruiting trail for Hugh Freeze and co. on the gridiron side of things.