Probably most of you here don't know, but he is my favorite Blazer and player all-time. Sure I've only been actively following the league for about 11 years, but there were things about him that made you respect him as a player and as a person. During his years in Portland, he was always a player you could count on to be reliable and provide exactly what he brought to the table - scoring, three point shooting, free throws, and he was a post up guard, probably better than Andre Miller, IMO. He was 6'8", and had the advantage during many nights against the other defender. He was smooth as a player and brought his A game when it mattered most. I enjoyed reading the Oregonian's article on Smith about his years in PDX: http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindblazersbeat/2009/10/trail_blazers_top_40_no_38_ste.html My favorite moment with Smitty? Crazily, it was when he was playing for the Spurs. The Lakers were going for yet another championship in 2003, and the Spurs were in LAX to finish the series and win, which they did. Does anyone remember this? The Spurs had the game in hand, Fisher and Kobe Bryant crying on the bench, and Smitty had the ball with the clock just winding down, waiting for the clock to reach 0:00 in the fourth quarter. Smith has the ball in the corner, and with probably 5 seconds left, just jacks up a casual three and makes it. Regardless of Smitty's reasons for doing that, I could not have picked a better time and player for a person to stick it to the Lakers. That shot was lasting for me. I was glad he took it. What are your memories of Smitty?
Ahhh Smitty . . . I loved that guy. I wish Portland would have got him about 3 years earlier. By 1999 his knees were shot. I don't like the term "Basketball IQ" - I think it gets overused. But that is truly the case for Steve Smith. He was a master at drawing fouls, especially late in games.
Smith actually started out as a point guard. Some people thought he was going to be the next Magic. Webster always will be compared to Glen Rice.... a poor man's Glen Rice.
I'll take a poor man's Glen Rice. He's got to shoot 85% from the Foul line and make 40% of his 3's to fit that mould. If he does that and scores 12-15 PPG, we will be tough to beat.
Favorite memory of Smitty was him schooling Kobe continually in the '00 series on the block. Kobe would cry to the refs, "He's holding my arm!" which Smitty did but it always looked like Kobe was grabbing him. Then one of the refs told him, "Kobe... he's crafty."
Smith was one of the often overlooked keys to the Blazers making the Western Conference Finals in 2000. I liked that he was one of those players you knew wasn't ever going to make a dumb play. With numbskulls like Damon Stoudamire and Rasheed Wallace on that team, it was nice to have guys like Smith that you could rely on.
Smith was a steal too. We got him for Rider and Jimmy Jackson. I was a fan of JJ, but when we got Smith I was psyched. He was on the dream team that year, and I remembered how good he was for ATL. He wasn't a star anymore, but he was still money. That was one of my favorite Trader Bob trades.
That Scottie Pippen/Steve Smith off-season was a really remarkable one. Pure gold. Shame that the next off-season didn't yield good results.
Not to mention Detlef. We added those three players to a team that already featured a young Rasheed, Brian Grant, Damon Stoudamire, Jermaine O'Neal, Sabonis, and Bonzi. That team was so deep, it wasn't even fair. The fact that we didn't win a title has to be one of the biggest disappointments in NBA history.
Like Penny Hardaway, Smith was a 6-7 point guard, ruined by injuries, who never really got to show his stuff because he was always on a good team. At the end of his Blazer stay, his reputation was as a complainer, but I thought the negatives of all the Cheeks players were overplayed by the Oregonian. When I think of him, I think of Penny.
He was a consummate professional. He never played for Cheeks - Dunleavy was the coach during both Smitty's seasons in P-Town. In the 2000-2001 season, the whole team was whining - even Pippen. After the 2000 WCF meltdown, the mental makeup of that team disintegrated. Look at the 2000-2001 roster - half of the guys were no-nonsense professionals (Smith, Pippen, Sabonis, Davis, Anthony, Schrempf) and half were knuckleheads (Sheed, Damon, Wells, Kemp, Augmon, Strickland) They started bringing Smitty off the bench during that season in favor of Bonzi - that may be what you are referring to. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Smith & Pippen particularly. They were so close to winning a title, and then to watch the antics of the idiots they played with had to be painful. Smith hadn't won a ring (although he later did with SA) and Pippen hadn't won his w/o Jordan (and never did)
I agree with you, although I'd probably move Dale Davis into the "knucklehead" category (in part for his "sorry, coach, I can't come on the road trip, because I don't want to slip on the ice outside my house" comments), and I'd move Augmon into the "professional" category. For a guy with an amazing knack for defense, and a pretty underrated offensive arsenal, he accepted paltry playing time behind Smith, Pippen, Bonzi Wells, and Detlef Schempf... but he never complained that I know of.
Dale Davis did live in Forest Heights. That ice storm was brutal. However, he should have contacted the team earlier - somebody could have figured something out. But that was really the only strike against him. Augmon? It's funny you say move him to the "professional" category. I would have said that too back then, I never remember hearing anything negative about him. Then I read something on the internet that he was heavily involved with the Bloods. That sort of spoiled it for me.
