Uh... typical capefeather answer, but it depends on what you mean by "Smogon". If you mean "any competitive Pokémon community with a similar scope to what Smogon is now", well, I can't imagine a competitive Pokémon following not growing eventually into *the* hub for serious tournaments and competitive discussion. Well, I suppose if VGC kicked off earlier, it might have killed the organic singles community, but even there I don't think that scenario is likely. It's not like people didn't or wouldn't know about EVs or RNG or other hacking stuff without the competitive motivation. Looking under Pokémon's hood would probably be more lucrative than the rest of the ROM hacking "industry" combined regardless.
I suppose things would change a bit more if "Smogon" were a different community with different foundations and eventual leadership, or if I individually never found Smogon. Regarding the former, well, I don't think anyone really knows what an alternate version of "the premier competitive Pokémon website" might look like, since there are so many possibilities. Yet, there are some aspects that I think would be retained. A rabid fanbase would probably still translate into a relatively rabid and confused competitive community, with different people wanting different things out of the site and no one getting along. There would still be long-held cultural aspects, influenced heavily by the culture that the Pokémon games produce, which would drastically impact how we think about the very idea of "competitive Pokémon", and which would be next to impossible to so much as question with any measure of efficacy. There would still be people who are chill, and people who want desperately to make people chill, only to have their efforts make things worse. There would still be hard-working people who are excited about contributing to a hobby in a semi-meaningful way, and some would be satisfied while others are blocked from contributing how they want for various reasons. Meh.
As for the latter, uh, I'm not really sure. I might have joined a different community, or not have drifted as far from other communities I have joined in the past. I might have beaten more video games. *shrugs* I'm not really sure of how I might have spent the time I have spent Pokémon battling and doing Pokémon-related projects... I'm not sure if I'd have been happier or if it would have been roughly the same. It's hard to pinpoint the source of one's misgivings sometimes. I have gone weeks without visiting the site and forums before, so maybe that's kind of an indication of what I might have been doing with my time, but it's still hard to say.
