Randy Smith... May You Rest in Peace, my friend and colleague

When it came time to pay tribute to NBA great randy Smith, no writer could've possibly paid respects from the fans, media and league office better than former Newsday NBA reporter Jerry Sullivan, now a great columnist for the Buffalo News. Here's to randy via my buddy, Jerry:

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"People regarded Smith with a mixture of affection and awe. He was, at once, the most remarkable athlete they ever saw and the most humble, genuine guy they ever knew."

Randy Smith: The essential Brave

APPRECIATION: Athletic guard combined style with humility, drawing the love of his teammates and Buffalo fans

By Jerry Sullivan

Durie Burns has done a lot of crying the past few days, a lot of laughing, too. It's the same for Bob McAdoo, and John Hummer, and anyone else who was lucky enough to know Randy Smith well. The emotions run deep. The memories are vivid and eternally young, like Randy. That's why it's so difficult to fathom that the former Buffalo Braves star is really gone, dead of a heart attack at 60.

Oh, and the stories. Burns will be telling them all this week, when he gets to North Carolina for his best friend's funeral. Actually, Smith was more like a brother to Burns, who starred with him on those great Buffalo State basketball teams of the early '70s.

"Randy was the most unselfish person I ever met in my life," Burns said Saturday from his home in Florida. "When I came back from the military, he was the star at Buffalo State. For the first six or seven games, all the write-ups were about Randy Smith, Randy Smith. Before the next game, he came to me and said, "You're playing great and no one knows it. We need to get you some publicity.'"

So Smith shaved his buddy's head. He told Burns to look mean on the court. The next game, Burns was the leading scorer. The headlines in the next day's paper read: "Burns shaves head to play mean and beef up Buff State."

"The point is, it wasn't about Randy," Burns said. "It was about his love for basketball. He was not seeking fame. He told me he would play for free."

People regarded Smith with a mixture of affection and awe. He was, at once, the most remarkable athlete they ever saw and the most humble, genuine guy they ever knew. At Buffalo State, Smith was an All-American in basketball, soccer and track. The 6-foot-3 guard was a tireless worker who developed from a raw seventh-round NBA draft pick to an All-Star who averaged more than 20 points a game four years in a row in his prime.

Hummer, an original Brave, played two seasons with Smith and recalled him as a fun-loving free spirit who earned the nickname "Two Till" because he'd often show up two minutes before the start of practice.

"He was the best athlete I ever played with at any level," Hummer said. "But more importantly, he had the sweetest soul. He didn't have a mean-spirited bone in his body. I can't believe he's gone. I always thought of him as indestructible."

At a certain age, you grow accustomed to losing old friends. But Smith was a physical marvel. Former Braves coach Jack Ramsay said he never coached a better athlete. Smith held the NBA record for consecutive games played with 906 until A.C. Green broke it in 1997. Smith had a warrior's heart. How could it give out this way?

"He was the Iron Man," McAdoo said from Florida, where his 12-year-old daughter was competing in a tennis tournament. "He never missed practice, never missed games. He was happy all the time. I never saw Randy with a frown on his face. It didn't seem like he had a lot of stress in his life."

Ernie DiGregorio shared a backcourt with Smith. By a twist of fate, he and Smith became celebrity hosts at Connecticut casinos — Ernie D. at Foxwoods, Smith at the Mohegan Sun, which is where he collapsed and died Thursday. They saw each other frequently, played golf and shared fond memories of the Braves, the Aud, and the adoring Buffalo fans.

"When we played, there was probably a little rivalry," DiGregorio said from his home in Providence, R.I. "You know how it goes. He thought I took too many shots. I thought he took too many. But we were really good friends the last 14 years.

"He was in great shape, that's why it's so shocking. At 60, he could run up and down the court and play a game. How many 60-year-olds can do that?"

DiGregorio said the Braves had to run a mile in under six minutes at the start of training camp. He used to practice in the summer. One year, he was leading the pack when this blur came flying by. It was Smith. Hummer remembers a mile run when Smith lapped the field. It was a four-lap race.

"And as I recall," Hummer said, "he wasn't even breathing hard."

McAdoo said Smith was "the absolute fastest runner" he ever saw on a basketball court. This from a man who played with the Showtime Lakers in the 1980s.

Burns, who was one of Smith's college roommates (Smith invited him to move in when Burns came back from the military), recalled a time when three roommates challenged each other to find out who was fastest.

"It was midnight," Burns said, laughing. "On Eastwood Place. Randy took two steps and was gone. Oh man, I've never seen anyone faster. Two steps and he was at full speed."

Smith blew by the best of them: Walt Frazier, John Havlicek, Julius Erving. There's a YouTube video of his performance in the 1978 All-Star Game, when he won MVP. Smith was at the peak of his powers. It was the year he averaged 24.6 points a game.

"Here's a little-known story," Burns said. "I called Randy from Detroit the Friday before that game. He said, "Man, my jumper is smoking. I think I can win MVP.' I said, "That's why I called you, because I think so, too.'"

That was also the final year of the Braves in Buffalo. Smith's All-Star Game show was the last great moment in the team's history, a day when Smith elevated to a higher level, in the company of legends.

It's eerie how things work out. The Aud is coming down. Last month, Lockport native Tim Wendel published a coffee table history of the Braves. Wendel said Smith was his most reliable resource among the former players, the one with the strongest ties to the community. Now he's gone.

"Randy called himself "The Last of the Mohicans,'" Wendel said. "He was there to the end. He was the last Brave, the soul of that team. We didn't put him on the cover of that book because it was a nice photo."

McAdoo was "The Man," but Smith was the essential Brave, the "Buffalo guy." Oh, he was a star, a man about town. He dressed the part. But he kept a genuine human quality, an ability to connect with common people. Buffalo fans love an athlete for that. Smith embraced them in kind. It's a common misperception that Smith was from Buffalo. He was a native North Carolinian who grew up in Bellport, Long Island.

Reggie Witherspoon, the UB coach, was among a legion of kids who came of age during the Braves' run in the '70s. Witherspoon got to know Smith later in life, when he helped run the Randy Smith Summer League. He traveled to three All-Star weekends with Smith and was struck by the affection for him among the NBA crowd.

"Everybody loved him," Witherspoon said. "From Jordan to Julius to everyone in between.

"He loved Buffalo," Witherspoon said. "He wasn't born here, so he took nothing for granted. I asked him how he wound up at Buff State. He said, "Michigan State, Buffalo State, what's the difference?' He said he just wanted to go someplace where he could compete.

"Randy had an incredible balance of flamboyance and humility. You saw pictures of him with the platform shoes and big hair, sitting on a Rolls. But he wasn't really that way. That's why everyone connected to him."

Burns said Smith came to town to play golf one day. Smith drove down the street in a Rolls Royce and a bunch of kids came running up for autographs. He began signing, but time grew short. He told the kids he'd be back in five or six hours.

"We got back home and there was a knock at the door," Burns said. "The kids were there. He signed every one. That's the kind of guy he was. He took it as a privilege to be a pro, not something he was entitled to."

Smith never forgot how lucky he was to be an athlete in this town. Teams might leave town, but those kind of players stay in the hearts of Buffalo fans forever.

"Randy didn't have any artifice to him," Hummer said. "There was nothing that wasn't real about him, not one thing. Let's face it, people like that are very rare."

jsullivan@buffnews.com

MLK Day Tribute to Big Bob Lanier ...

Let's face it, we all have our favorites.

Among my favorites co-workers from 26 years at the NBA are Tom "Satch" Sanders and Big Bob Lanier. Satch and Bob are two of the greatest players who have ever played the game. They are even better people.

The NBA is paying tribute to Bob today as part of the MLK Day holiday. Bob hails from Buffalo and Buffalo News columnist Jerry Sullivan, a former Newsday NBA writer, wrote the following tribute to Lanier's work:


The Bennett High and St. Bonaventure graduate has made as big an impact on human lives as anyone who ever played

NBA honors Lanier for work in spirit of Dr. King


COMMENTARY
by Jerry Sullivan

Last summer, Bob Lanier was in town for a St. Bonaventure reunion when he took a tour of his old neighborhood on Buffalo’s East Side. Lanier visited his mother’s old house on Northland Avenue. Then he went over to the Boys & Girls Club on Masten Avenue, where he had spent so much of his free time as a kid.

Lanier walked into the club, unannounced. None of the kids recognized him. Then, a little boy noticed an old photograph of a basketball player on the wall. He gazed at the middle-aged man standing before him, and back to the photo. “Is that you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lanier said with a smile. “That was me at one time. I don’t know anymore.”

That’s how many people see Lanier after all these years — as a basketball legend, a towering, two-dimensional figure in an old, black-andwhite photograph. But the little boy had no idea that a true giant was in his midst, a man whose achievements extend far beyond the modest, rectangular world of a basketball court.

Oh, Lanier was one of the all-time greats. The Bennett High and St. Bonaventure grad is a Hall of Famer, an eight-time NBA All-Star. Last fall, the court at Bona was renamed in his honor. He is the best player this town has ever produced.

We don’t turn out many hoop greats. But our guy has made as big an impact on human lives as anyone who ever played. For the past 10 years, as special assistant to the commissioner, Lanier has been the NBA’s good-will ambassador, spreading a message of hope and education to people around the world.

On Monday, as part of the NBA’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. day, Lanier will be honored for his contributions to civil and human rights at the Grizzlies-Bulls game in Memphis, Tenn. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will also be honored.

Lanier said he was humbled to be honored for carrying on King’s legacy of justice and equality.

“I was blessed as a young boy in Buffalo, N.Y., that I had two parents,” Lanier said Thursday by phone. “My mother was from Kentucky and my daddy from Tennessee. My sister and I had a sense of our history instilled us at a young age.”

Lanier remembers traveling through the South when he was 9. He and his father had to go into a restaurant through the back door, a “Colored Only” entrance. He had heard the older folks talk about discrimination, but he had never experienced it until that day.

“I was too young to understand the impact of that moment until I was in college, and they wouldn’t serve a group of us at a bar my freshman year. They said they didn’t serve mixed couples. We were just a bunch of kids going to a function. I think it helped shape my life and my thinking, and gave me a strong sense of the fight for fairness and equality in life, and everybody having equal access and opportunity.”

Lanier, who retired in 1984, began working for the NBA in 1988. He spent a short time as a coach, then returned to the league office, where he has been doing a variety of community outreach programs for the past decade. He leads NBA Cares, the league’s global outreach program, and the Read to Achieve program.

“One of the great moments for me,” Lanier said, “is when I see our players sitting on a floor or a big old couch with kids in their laps or gathered around them, reading a book and trying to make the words come to life for the kids.”

Lanier was a founder of Basketball Without Borders, which runs hoop clinics around the world. Last summer, he led the NBA’s 12-city tour, organizing summer day camps to teach kids basketball and life skills. Two weeks ago, he was in Miami for a volunteer day, serving food at a rescue mission. The big lefty has run the league’s rookie transition program for years. He’s the national chairman of the NBA’s Stay In School initiative. He gives motivational speeches on education, family development and health.

Yeah, his legacy goes a little bit farther than his 19,248 points and his 9,698 rebounds. How do you calculate the number of hearts and minds Lanier has helped reach? Teachers say they touch the future. That’s what Lanier has done.

Lanier coached briefly in 1995, taking over as Golden State’s head man for half a season. Back then, he told me he wanted to give players “wisdom for life.” He went 12-25 and decided there were better ways to impart his wisdom.

“You don’t know what the Lord has in store,” Lanier said. “But there is something in my message that I think comes from another place, that it’s not me. It comes through me. The NBA has given me a forum to touch more lives than I could ever touch on my own. I’m an instrument. What has been special to me is that our commissioner [David Stern], he got it. He understood that touching young lives is germane to us building a better America.”

As a black man in America, Lanier exults in the progress that has been made, while acknowledging how far we have yet to go.

“The longer I live, the more I know we still need to focus on,” he said. “We have to continue to get people of color educational opportunities and let them know the importance of education. We have to strive for a level playing field. Until I see that happening, we have a lot more work to do.”

Lanier sees himself as a living example. He said he wouldn’t be where he is today without the Franciscan ideals that were instilled in him at St. Bonaventure. He gets a surge of pride when he hears people say he reflects everything that school stands for.

“That lifts me up,” he said. “My parents always told me I had to work twice as hard, because I wasn’t only representing myself. I represented my parents, family and community. I was blessed to grow up with the parents I had, and to come from Buffalo. Those two things kept me rooted in life.”

By Jerry Sullivan - jsullivan@buffnews.com