DENVER – Who would have thought, if you chose between two Wake Forest point guards from back in the day, that the first to win the NBA championship would be… Ishmael Larry Smith, not Chris Paul?
CP3’s quest for a ring has been well documented over the years: the angst that followed the soon-to-be Hall of Famer as he moved from team to team for over a decade, searching for the team that could finally succeed. By contrast, the 34-year-old Smith was on a very different path.
“Skillful” is a pejorative in this league, dismissing a player whose talent and personality is still high enough to keep him in the game, but not good enough to find a permanent home. Smith is much more than that. Players like him form the backbone of the NBA – true pros, capable of making any situation, any season, work. There he is, having made 762 regular season appearances over 13 seasons and becoming the first player in NBA history to play for 13 different teams—the last (for now) being the Nuggets, where he was this season after being traded from Washington , along with Kentavius Caldwell Pope, Last Summer.
Still, no one dismisses what Smith brings to a team, even as loaded as Denver’s, that will lead 1-0 in Game 2 of the Finals Sunday against Miami, and for whom he’s playing the Big Statesman role.
“It’s obvious why he stuck around as long as he has been. He’s a good guy. The guys love him,” says Jeff Hornacek, who coached Smith at Phoenix in 2013-14.
“Anyone who asks me about my profession, I tell them, ‘I’ve learned a lot from Ish,'” says KCP, with whom he’s been on three different teams. “Just being with him in Detroit, and he’s commuting, and (we) meeting up in Washington. It never seems to bother him. He stays happy, smiling, like always supporting the group. I learned a lot from him.”
Year after year after year, since joining the league as an unordered rookie in 2010, Smith has had to start over. He was with the Warriors at the beginning of the franchise’s turnaround, with Steve Curry (whom he played for on the AAU at North Carolina, on the Charlotte Stars) and Klay Thompson, in 2011—but only for six games. Play with general bucks before They drafted Giannis Antitekounmo. He struggled through what may be the nadir of the 76ers’ “process,” in 2015-16 — but still managed to score 20 or more tackles 16 times on what ended up being a 10-win team. He’s been in many incarnations from the Pistons and Wizards, Grit-n-Grinded with the Grizzlies to Game 7 against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Semifinals in 2011 (and yes, in the end, he ended up playing for the Thunder, too).
But he hasn’t been out of a job or out of league since President Obama’s first term in office.
“Honestly, man, I have faith in God,” Smith said Saturday. “Whichever way he did it, that’s the way he did it. And it played every role. When I was in Philly trusting the process, it was like, ‘Hey, ish, you gotta get us a bucket. ‘ Even if we won 10 or 20 games. I was rolling. I was in every role. My first three years were like, ‘Esh, you’re a guy, we need you, go out there and play, come early.’ And that was when it wasn’t Uber, so you can get there. In a cab early, or getting in a cab with a coach, getting one-on-one, two-on-two. And you’re not going to play. Put on your suit – remember when you had to wear suits on the seat?
“Then I got to Phoenix. And I’m like, Well, we’ve got a bunch of misfits here. And we’ve won 48 games. … So you’re playing AD (Anthony Davis) in New Orleans, he throws balls left and right. So I was in every role Then I was in Detroit. My role in Washington was, “Esh, come on, change the pace.” I averaged like 11, 12 (points) off the bench, five, six assists. … Now, you In such a leadership role, where the guys are like, “Ish, what do you think of this?” And I’m like, “I’m not used to this.” Because now you’re seeing the game from here, instead of from there. It’s easy. It’s Like, well, the low guy here, he’ll play like that, and read and interact. You’ve been doing that your whole life.”
Smith knew, of course, that he would not have the career of Paul, who set the standard for point guard play in Winston-Salem, a place that has sent many storied generals to the league—from Muggsy Bogues and Jeff Teague to Frank Johnson and Danny Young. (Unstated: Charlie Davis, who played for Cleveland and Portland in the early 1970s, but is best known for being the first black player in Atlantic Coast Conference history to be named the ACC Most Valuable Player in 1971.)
It took humility – and most honestly, because Smith is that kind of guy, that kind of family. His mother cleaned the houses in the morning and raised him and his two sisters in the afternoon. His father taught high school in the morning and then did cleaning work in the evening for the family business. There were no excuses in the Smith house, no short cuts. When Smith was entering his senior year at Central Cabarrus HS in Concord, NC, he wanted a car—”a green Honda Accord, $2,500, 1993,” Smith recalls. His father pointed to the tablets in a classroom at his father’s school.
His father asked him: “Do you want this car?” “We’re going to pull (the old baseboards), and you put some new ones down. They need new baseboards. That’s how you get your money. That’s kind of indicative of how I grew up, why I work, why I don’t travel. If you tell either of us we’ll sit there, in This time, when we were young, we were going to record.”
Even so, it’s still tough in a league that tests you every day, works overtime to tire you out, and questions your worth, so you don’t get tired of working. However, Smith never complained about the myriad deals that were a regular part of February, his minimal contracts, or his sporadic playing time.
“It’s been like this forever,” says Stan Van Gundy, an analyst now at TNT, who coached him in Orlando and Detroit.
“It’s fair, he’s just so lucky, not only himself, but everyone else, to be in the NBA and play. He’s just one of the most grateful people — not just in the NBA — that I’ve been around. He appreciates everything Happened. And he’s worked his ass off to get all of this. But he doesn’t really talk about it. He’s so grateful to be able to play in the league and everything else. … I’ve never seen a day, not a single day, where ish was frustrated and had no enthusiasm, And I didn’t have the energy. Not one day.”
Smith always had his quick moves. Kevin Durant He was praised for his speed early in his career. The wicked Cross Smith and his ability to get into the paint at will against just about anyone is valuable to any team in any era.
“He was embarrassing me and Aaron Brooks in practice,” Miami native Kyle Lowry, who played for Smith in Houston in 2010, said in Smith’s rookie season.
“Too fast, can’t keep up,” Lowry continued. “I’m not going to lie, I hated having to pit against him. But if you go back and look at his journey and the things he’s been through, to finally get to this point of making it to the finals, I can’t wait to see him and say hi. Every time I see him, he’s still He calls me a vet.”
In Phoenix, Smith had to battle for playing grounds with Eric Bledsoe, Leandro Barbosa, and Goran Dragic, on a team that shocked the league by going 48-34.
“He just had that smile,” Hornacek remembers. “He’s trained really hard all the time. If he doesn’t play for a night or two, I can go to him and say ‘we need to pick up the pace, move these guys,’ and he’ll go away. He wasn’t a shooter, but he knew how to run the offense. We got into a groove with him.” , Morris Brothers, Gerald Green. They loved playing with him…but besides playing with him, it was just his personality. For him it was about the team. Obviously every player thinks about how to stay in the league, but for him it was about winning The team. … It’s going to be Haslem (Odonis). He’s got to be 42 and still be at the end of someone’s seat. Because he’s going to help this team win.”
Van Gundy remembers one time when the Pistons were going through a rough patch, after losing three or four in a row.
“I was up early, sitting in the office, getting ready for training, but not in the mood, to say the least,” he said. “Esh was always one of the first guys to get in, shooting and stuff. I had to cross the training ground to get to the training room. I’d go talk to our coach about injury updates and stuff before practice. So I came for a walk, which I sure didn’t have a smile on.” my face or something. And Ish is there shooting, and Ish turned to me and said “Coach? Can you believe they pay us for it? How not to smile at this point? How not to completely change your mood and have a completely different perspective on what is happening? He’s a wonderful guy.”
Van Gundy will get updates on players around the league from their director of player squad, Adam Glessner, who is now the Spurs’ senior director of basketball intelligence. Part of Glessner’s job was to find out all about as many players as possible, and talk to the coaches who coached them, or the team personnel who worked with them, to add to a Detroit profile about potential future acquisitions. Obviously, since Smith has played with so many players over the years, Glessner and Van Gundy thought Smith would be a go-to for exciting inside information.
It wasn’t.
“It’s one of Esh’s disadvantages,” Van Gundy said with a laugh. “I said there’s no point getting information out of Ish, because he loves everyone and thinks everyone is the greatest man ever. He’s so positive about everyone. He’s silly. But it’s all legit. It’s not like he’s trying to get a BS with you. He has an innate sense of finding the positive in everyone. It’s not like he’s being silly or anything. Ish knows the deal. But what he chooses to focus on, in every situation and every person, is the positive.”
This is why Smith is so fine playing just over nine minutes per game this season. The Nuggets have Jamal Murray to handle with the Rock, and he’s reinvigorated Bruce Brown’s use as a starting point guard, where he played so effectively earlier in his career. So Smith sits. However, the only feat Smith could not achieve with his play was three wins, in a season in which he rarely played at all. The show is funny that way.
“It would be fun, honestly,” says Smith. “And that’s not all. A piece of jewelry isn’t anything and everything. But man. The years you go by, 13 and it’s still going. The years you won 10 games. The years you were enjoying the city, you were on a team, and all of a sudden they call Bey and they say, “Esh, you’re about to get traded.” And then the years you’ve been in Detroit and you keep banging your head on the ninth seed, and then you finally get into the eighth seed and play Milwaukee, and they drop your head. Those, it just kind of puts the icing on the cake. The ring is not all, but the man, (will feel) good.”
Go deeper
Ish Smith Pop Quiz: How many ring mates do 13 have?
(Ish Smith top photo: Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)