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Smith enjoyed some the most productive seasons of his career while
wearing an Atlanta Hawks uniform.
Steven (Steve) Delano Smith (born March 31,
1969, in Highland Park, Michigan) is a
retired American
basketball player. He
played with several teams in his 14-year National Basketball
Association career, including the Miami Heat, the Portland Trail Blazers and the
San Antonio
Spurs, but is perhaps best known for his five-year stint with
the Atlanta
Hawks which included an All-Star Game appearance in 1998. He
won a championship
with the Spurs in 2003.
Smith was widely regarded as an excellent three-point shooter
and an experienced veteran and won the 1994 FIBA World
Championship [1] and an
Olympic gold medal with the
Olympic USA basketball
team in 2000 at
Sydney.
College
career
Smith had finished his four-year career as the all-time leading
scorer in Michigan State history, with 2,263 points. He ranks
fourth on the school's all-time assists list (with 453) and fifth
in rebounds (with 704). For his college career Smith averaged 18.5
points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists per contest in 122 games. He
was named a First Team All-American as both a junior and a senior.
Smith led the Spartans to a Big Ten Championship and Sweet Sixteen
appearance in 1990 and hit a game-winning, last-second
three-pointer to beat Wisconsin–Green Bay in the first round of the
1991 NCAA Tournament. He was inducted into Michigan State's
Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001.
NBA
career
Smith was selected fifth overall in the 1991 NBA Draft by
the Miami Heat for whom he played for three seasons before being
traded two games into the 1994-95 season to the Atlanta Hawks.
He spent five seasons with the Hawks before being traded to the
Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for Jim Jackson and Isaiah Rider.
He was traded to the Spurs for Derek Anderson in the
off-season of 2001. He won an NBA title with the Spurs before
signing as a free agent with the New Orleans Hornets in 2003 where
he played for one season. He began the 2004-05 season with the newly-formed Charlotte
Bobcats, where he was named team co-captain and scored the
franchise's first 3-point field goal, but he was later re-acquired
by the Heat at the February 24, 2005 trade deadline in exchange for
Malik Allen. He
announced his retirement at the end of that season.[2]
He holds career averages of 14.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.1
assists per game while shooting 35.8 percent from behind the three-point line. He
holds the Hawks' single-game record for three-pointers with 9.
Post-NBA
career
Smith worked as an announcer on Atlanta Hawks games with Bob Rathbun and on the
Big Ten
Network as a college basketball analyst. For the 2008 season,
Smith took a position at NBA
TV, and was replaced for Hawks broadcasts by Dominique
Wilkins.
Charitable
work
Smith is well known for his charitable pursuits, including a USD
$2.5 million gift in 1997 to his alma mater, Michigan State University,
where he was a star guard under coach Jud Heathcote. Smith's donation helped to
fund the Clara Bell Smith Student Academic Center, which is named
for his mother. This was the largest single donation by a
professional athlete to his former school in history.[3] In
recognition for his generosity, during the 1997-98 NBA season, Smith received the J. Walter Kennedy
Citizenship Award, and in 2001-02 received
the Joe Dumars NBA
Sportsmanship Award.
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