The Knicks won't have J.R. Smith this weekend. [Updated]

The Knicks have a road trip this weekend. Well, their entire preseason has been a road trip because of the Garden renovations, but they'll actually be away from the practice facility until late Monday night. Starting Friday, they've got three games in four nights, with stops in Montreal, Albany, and Syracuse. The plane's already boarded for Cañada, and anyone not immediately available-- a list that already included Rasheed Wallace and Marcus Camby-- is getting ditched in New York for the duration of the journey. After yesterday's encouraging update regarding Ronnie Brewer and only mildly discouraging update regarding J.R. Smith, the hope was that New York would have both ready for the trip. Alas:

Smith, now wearing a protective boot, didn’t practice Thursday and will not make the Knicks' three-game preseason road trip that starts Friday night in Montreal vs. the Raptors.

J.R.'ll stay behind to rehab his sore Achilles tendon/make moves threw the city. Meanwhile, after Ronnie Brewer practiced yesterday and expressed hope that he'd be able to scrimmage today, it turns out nobody scrimmaged today, and sounds like Brewer got left behind as well.* As far as I can tell, there's no new cause for concern with J.R. nor any need to worry Brewer won't be ready for opening day. It's just a bummer we'll get one game at most to see a proper shooting guard rotation before the scores begin to count. On the other hand, the potential for a Sheed-Camby-Ronnie-Earl Home Alone situation makes up for all that.

So, I guess we'll be seeing plenty more of Mychel Thompson and James White over the next three games. With luck, one of them will actually show us something. We've some undetermined amount of Amar'e Stoudemire action to look forward to as well, so there's that.

*Al Iannazzone twat seconds after I initially posted this that Ronnie Brewer WILL make the trip this weekend, so perhaps we'll get to see him in one of these preseason games.