Pastor Uses J.R. Smith Untying Shoelaces In Sermon About “Growing Up”

Perhaps you missed it over the weekend, but J.R. Smith returned to the Knicks rotation, after his benching against the Heat, and even got a rarely seen kick block on Saturday night against the Sixers. Now, thanks to the wonderful r/NBA reddit community, we got to hear about a pastor who used Shoelacegateâ„¢ as a teaching moment during his Sunday sermon.

Here’s the story, via reddit/r/NBA:

I went to one of the Harvest Bible Chapel churches in the Chicago area this morning and at the start of the sermon the pastor asked the church if they knew who J.R. Smith was.

Cue some chatter and whatnot, he said his son told him about an incident that recently happened during a professional basketball game. Showed him the video, he was laughing and couldn’t believe it. He told the church then about the shoe-untying incident, everyone gasped and chuckled, it was hilarious.

He then said that he brought the video footage and everybody laughed. It played on the big projector screen and it was the one with Shawn Marion’s shoe, it was hilarious. He then showed it again in slow-motion, everyone lol’d.

The sermon then continued about how this is a professional basketball player who was acting like a child, on live tv, and needed to grow up. And then continued about how we all needed to grow up, we all act childish sometimes, etc.

J.R. Smith was the prelude to the message about growing up. In church. This happened. I laughed.

That is all.

Just to reiterate, a pastor at a church in Chicago played video of J.R. Smith untying Shawn Marion‘s shoelaces as part of his sermon about growing up. That’s just about perfect. The NBA is amazing.