It has been an interesting offseason for J.R. Smith. The mercurial Knicks guard got a big payday, to the tune of three years and $17.95 million; almost immediately following that he announced that he was going under the knife to repair a chipped patella tendon in July; and so far he’s spent his rehab firing verbal salvos at the new look Brooklyn Nets. 

Smith offered up his opinion on the Nets' flashy trade for Paul Pierce when he said Pierce was “just a bitter person trying to get out of Boston.” He also added that “his words have consequences and he’s going to have to pay for them.” 

But while the battle for the streets of New York may be heating up, the battle for Eastern Conference supremacy is one the Knicks are not even involved in. Perhaps Smith lives in an alternate reality in which the Knicks were one tiny step away from winning a title last year. Perhaps he simply forgot how the Knicks went to six games against the Boston Celtics, a team more fitted to play in a senior citizens league than in the playoffs. Perhaps he forgot how Carmelo Anthony and Iman Shumpert alone carried the overmatched Knicks into battle against a tougher, younger and better Indiana squad last year. 

The battle for the East does not run through Brooklyn and it definitely does not run through Madison Square Garden either. 

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Instead it runs through Miami, where the two-time defending NBA champions boast the best player since Michael Jordan in LeBron James, a player who averaged 25 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists throughout one of the all-time great NBA Finals. 

It runs through Chicago, where the Bulls made it to the second round without Derrick Rose and will now have him back fully healthy. 

It runs through Indiana, through a Pacers team that beat the Knicks handedly and took the Heat to seven games. The Pacers added a tough veteran defender and solid outside shooter in Luis Scola in a trade with Phoenix. They will have Danny Granger back and fully healthy for the season.  Plus they swiped Chris Copeland, whose outside shooting and energetic defense of the bench made him a fan favorite and valuable asset for coach Mike Woodson last year in New York. 

The Knicks need to set their sights on beating these teams, not on beating a team who lost in the first round of the playoffs and whose showpiece additions for the 2013 season are players who are 36 and 37 years old. The Knicks-Nets rivalry is totally irrelevant, a product of media hype and fan posturing based on geography.

Smith and the Knicks would be better served figuring out how to incorporate Andrea Bargnani, a seven-footer who only averaged 3.7 rebounds per game last year on a miserable Toronto team, into a team that desperately needs defense and rebounding. They would be better served trying to decipher what they could get out of Amar’e Stoudemire, the 18-million dollar man who only appeared in 29 games last season. They’d be better served ignoring Brooklyn completely, no matter how annoying Paul Pierce gets. 

Only then can they set their sights on the Eastern Conference’s best. Once they do, they need to look a lot further then just across the East River towards the Barclays Center. 

Reach Staff Writer Russell Simon via e-mail.