When we pull up, they have Dave Matthews playing on the outdoor speakers. Night has fallen on Pepper Pike, Ohio, and behind the music we can make out the song of darkness whistling through the suburban forests, the rustling of leaves, and the shifting of a far-off (I'm guessing) Lexus luxury utility vehicle on a homeward vector toward a remote-controlled four-car garage. We exit J. R. Smith's white Mercedes and walk to the door. And as we walk, what should suddenly appear before us but two deer—a mother and a fawn—nibbling cold November lawn grass. Oh Jesus, I think, this is going to be fantastic. After all, if J. R. Smith had a theme song, it might be called “The Opposite of Dave Matthews.” And here we are, not only listening to dad rock, but watching two suburban deer listening to dad rock in the yard of Megan Fellinger, my old friend from the Shaker Heights, Ohio, high school swim team.

Man, I thought to myself as we watched the deer, what a strange expatriation you must be living through, J. R. Smith. What a great distance you've traveled, in not even a year, since the days when you were still the shooting guard for the New York Knicks. Since you were living in that dope rental apartment in Manhattan—“There was too much to do. That was trouble!” you will tell the dinner-party guests tonight. Since you were dating Rihanna! Or at least, according to your Twitter account, not officially not dating Rihanna. Since a kid at Harvard published an impressive study that surmised—by dint of an exhaustive comparison of all NBA players' performances on Sundays versus the rest of the week—that you were the biggest partyer currently in the league. Since you tweeted pictures of reality-TV stars' butts in your hotel room on road trips. Since you accumulated what The Wall Street Journal described, super Wall Street Journal-y, as “the NBA's Most Diversified Portfolio of Infractions”—like untying opposing players' shoes during foul shots or elbowing dudes in the nuts. Since you drove around New York City in a $450,000 Gurkha armored truck and got in fights on the court and pissed off Phil Jackson and became one of the favorite subjects of the flesh-eating sportswriters at the New York Post.

And now here you are in Cleveland, Ohio. Where I grew up. Sure, I thought, you've been here for almost a year. But have you really seen Cleveland? And when Megan Fellinger said, Hey, I'm having some friends from the neighborhood for dinner, why don't you come by? I thought: What better way to show him his new city than by taking him to that?

Jacket by Stampd; sweatpants by John Elliott + Co.

As we drove here, I asked J.R. what he thought when he was traded. Were you, I said, like, “Oh man, I have to live in Cleveland?”

“Honestly?” he said, piloting his German spacecar through a desolate web of interstates. “I was petrified. Seriously. I didn't know what to expect. I thought: The weather is gonna be horrible. There's going to be nowhere to go out to eat. There's going to be nowhere to party.”

Future—“Real Sisters”—was on his car stereo. The spacecar dampened ambient noise so severely that the Cleveland we passed through—the unlit bungalows of Brook Park, the burn-off flame over one of Cleveland's last operational steel plants—felt immaterial, like a “gritty” title sequence for a new season of True Detective.

Is it the last place, I asked, voicing the fear we all have as Cleveland sports fans, people want to play?

“There,” J.R. said. “And probably Utah.”

Leaving the deer to their supper now, we approached the door. There they all were, the dinner guests, crowded around the kitchen island, bathed in buttery light. J.R., this might be the most boring night of your entire star-crossed life, I thought.

And then we are inside the house and they're all here, staring at us. Surprised! (No one knew J.R. was coming.) Dewy-eyed! Totally pleasant! In normal clothes, the kind of clothes you and I might be wearing right now in our normal houses! Not just my old pal Megan (I once threw her mom into the pool! One of those stories you think is hilarious until you try it out at a rehearsal dinner) and her husband, the affable Rob. Jody and Heather Herzog, who own three Fleet Feet shoe franchises! Ted and Lisa Bryan from down the block! Stacy and Jon Stoller, who do something and live somewhere!

T-shirt by Gucci

Megan proffers a bottle of Macallan and J.R. is all like, For sure, Macallan, fill it all the way up. He doesn't drink much of it. In fact, I don't see him drink a sip. But he knows how to be a good guest. And then it isn't long before all the kids come in from wherever they were and just stare at J. R. Smith like he can't see them, too. And J. R. Smith just loves it. It seems to make him physically stronger. He has grown an inch. J. R. Smith, turns out, really likes to please people.

One of the kids delivers this little rehearsed question: Excuse me J.R. I love basketball in fact I just came from basketball I love to learn would you help me with my jump shot later? And J.R. says yeah of course he'll help the kid with his jump shot. Then he says, “Wait, when you're playing do you ever pass it?” And the kid says yes. And J.R. says, “Man, don't pass it. Shoot! Every time you get it, shoot.” And everyone just falls out. Because that's the bad rap on J.R.! But see, J.R. is making it okay for you to laugh at J.R.

"I tell [LeBron] you can't have everything," J.R. says. "You have to give up one thing, and it just so happened it's your hair."

This, by the way, is the insolvable, fascinating, sports-geek-worthy problem of J. R. Smith. He is the most beautiful shooter in America. I mean maybe Steph Curry is more beautiful, fine, if you want to argue that. But who really cares, because the point is J. R. Smith is a beautiful basketball player. But he also terrifies you. He is so good, he can actually lose the game for you. He is one of the few people in professional sports whose talent is actually a liability. If he didn't know he could do almost anything, he wouldn't always be so tempted to try. This is the man who said that he would name his autobiography Open Shots Are Boring. What I mean is, if you got points for difficulty, for audacity (and for being suspended by the league for punching Boston Celtics [who totally deserved it] in the playoffs), then J. R. Smith would atomize the competition and be an All-Star every year. But as it is, he is a guy who comes off the bench for a very good basketball team to provide “spark.” Who averaged about 11 points per game for the Cavs last year. J. R. Smith is a beautiful basketball player who sometimes, but inevitably, breaks your heart. Before unbreaking it. Before breaking it again. It is why he is an object of fascination. He is the ur-figure for a certain type of sportswriter more interested in characters than stats. Anyway.

When the kids retreat, beaten back by their parents (Give him some space! Stop staring at him!), J.R. is like, “Man I'm starving! Isn't anyone going to ask me to eat?” And we all laugh at that, too. What a nice guy! J.R. helps himself to some tasty newfangled mashed-potato thing, some delicious flank steak carved up right there by Rob Fellinger, some kind of broccoli that had been murdered in a pot and displayed gruesomely before us like the limp quarry of a house cat. Everyone's feeling comfortable now, and the questions are rapid-fire. What did you think of China when you played there? “China was the worst place I've ever been in my life.” What do you think about Ohio not passing that marijuana-legalization initiative? “Man, if you'd passed it, I wouldn't have to leave in the off-season!” How can you concentrate when you're shooting free throws and everyone's yelling?! “That's easy. It's when you're in Utah and people are shouting the N-word that's tough.” Really? we all say. “Really,” he says. “Really.”

What about Shump's hair? I ask a little later, about his teammate Iman Shumpert, who wears a kind of retro flattop. What do you think of that? Do you think he looks like Grace Jones? Are you pro Shump's hair?

“No,” he says, laughing. “No, I'm not.”

The bottom line is: What a guest J. R. Smith is. If you're having a dinner party with fortysomethings at your house in a mild suburb of any city, you really ought to think about inviting 30-year-old basketball star J. R. Smith. I have to drag him away from a conversation about the merits of golf courses in Cleveland so we can make it on time to the charity event he's due at. On his way out, he promises to join Megan for a foursome at the Mayfield Sand Ridge country club.

Let's get back to the hairstyles of the Cleveland Cavaliers for a minute. Because this is journalism. And at another point in the evening I will succeed in breaking J.R. down about LeBron's hair.

“I tell him you can't have everything,” J.R. says. “I tell him all the time: You can't have it all! You have to give up one thing, and it just so happened it's your hair. If someone told me I'm gonna give you $600 million but I'm going to take your hair? Take my hair!”

Related: LeBron Plays Team GQ For His February '09 Cover

From Pepper Pike, I direct J. R. Smith west, toward downtown Cleveland and the Quicken Loans Arena for his charity event. J.R. doesn't know Cleveland, really. He knows the West Side a little, he knows how to get to the practice facility, the arena. Pretty much the rest of the city is just a blank space overlaid by the metallic glow of Google Maps.