J.R. Smith's soup choice remains unknown, and so do the ingredients of what steamed him so much that he threw a bowl of soup at assistant coach Damon Jones.
Smith was suspended one game by the Cavaliers, and Saturday the 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 team's shootaround, "I don't even remember."
Smith, who started Saturday and scored XXXXXX points in Cleveland's XXXX-XXXXX win/loss after serving his one-game 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 head Coach Tyronn Lue's staff for two seasons.
"It's not really my call," the 31-year-old said on the merits of his 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 here to play basketball."
Because of Smith's volatile reputation and shoot-first-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. It's just part of the game."
Smith dodged a question about whether it was spur of the moment or something that had been building.
"I have an idea of what I want to say, but I'm not going to say it," he said. "So I'm going to leave that as it is."
LeBron James is close with both Smith and Jones, but he refused to get dragged into their food feud.
"Ain't got nothing to do with me," he said. "Momma told me a long time ago to mind your business. Stay out of grown folks' business. That ain't got nothing to do with me. That's what I did."
My bad
Wide receiver Antonio Callaway was kicked off the Florida football team before the start of last season. At the NFL Scouting Combine he shouldered the responsibility for the team's 4-7 season. After the season, head coach Jim McElwain was fired.
"I know him getting fired and all that was [because of] me, because of the season they had," Callaway said. "I know I could've made a big difference.
"To see the program go down like that and coach Mac lose his job? That hurt me because I know it was basically because of me. I know I could've made a big difference. I made a mistake. I was young."
Callaway was one of several Gators dismissed from the team due to alleged credit card fraud. The receiver said that he got pretty low at times having to sit at home and watch Florida play on TV.
But when his daughter Aulani was born in February, Callaway said it changed him.
"It's bigger than me," Callaway said. "It ain't about me. I got a little girl. I just had her three weeks ago. I've got four little sisters. A single mom. I got to make it happen. I can't be out here making mistakes and throwing myself in bad situations."
Sports on 03/04/2018