In his past two games, Smith has totaled 34 points, only three of which have come from behind the arc.

"My philosophy is if the guy is small, I can post up," Smith said. "If the guy is big, I can take him off the dribble. He's got to be one of the two."

For much of the season, the Spurs' philosophy was to use Smith to space the floor. With Tim Duncan and David Robinson doing most of the post-up work, he had little room to operate around the basket.

The strategy seemed to work well enough when Smith led the league in 3-point shooting for more than three months, hitting better than 50 percent of his attempts. Recently, however, teams have become less inclined to drop off him. Since the All-Star break, he has made only 13 of 36 3-pointers (36.1 percent).