{"id":780942,"date":"2026-07-05T02:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T02:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/780942\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T02:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T02:19:09","slug":"braden-smith-on-undersized-guards-succeeding-in-nba-its-kind-of-making-a-bit-of-a-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/780942\/","title":{"rendered":"Braden Smith on undersized guards succeeding in NBA: It&#8217;s kind of making a bit of a comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You see a guy like Jalen Brunson, leading his team to win the title. Throughout his career, people have talked about him being undersized. When you see that, does it tell you, \u2018Hey guys, it doesn\u2019t matter how big you are as long as you have the heart and can make the right reads, it really doesn\u2019t matter what size you are\u2019? Braden Smith: Yeah, that\u2019s exactly what it is, and obviously, him doing that last year and with [Ryan] Nembhard on the Mavericks. I think with him playing as well as he did, I think that helps. <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/articles\/braden-smith-q-people-always-132214977.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:TJ [McConnell], the year before, when they went on their Finals run, helps. It just shows that it\u2019s kind of making a little bit of a comeback;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;TJ [McConnell], the year before, when they went on their Finals run, helps. It just shows that it\u2019s kind of making a little bit of a comeback&quot;}\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TJ [McConnell], the year before, when they went on their Finals run, helps. It just shows that it\u2019s kind of making a little bit of a comeback<\/a>. I think it\u2019s the right way to play basketball, one. But two, you need those guys who understand the game and it\u2019s not just off of athleticism and just because you can go run and dunk type of thing, more than people that actually understand basketball.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/articles\/braden-smith-q-people-always-132214977.html\" data-ylk=\"slk:HoopsHype;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;HoopsHype&quot;}\" class=\"link  yahoo-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">HoopsHype<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You see a guy like Jalen Brunson, leading his team to win the title. Throughout his career, people&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[125232,49,48,19284,459,82,19766],"class_list":["post-780942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-braden-smith","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-the-mavericks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}