Texas Tech basketball alums: Zhaire Smith’s NBA career on thin ice after trade

After being traded to the Detroit Pistons, who plan to waive him, former Texas Tech basketball star Zhaire Smith might be out of NBA opportunities.

The old saying suggests that “it is better to be lucky than good”.  Former Texas Tech basketball star Zhaire Smith might agree with that sentiment after a run of unfortunate luck has put his NBA career in jeopardy.

Sunday afternoon, the breakout star of Texas Tech’s 2018 run to the Elite Eight was traded from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Detroit Pistons who reportedly plan to waive him.  Now, it is fair to wonder if Smith will get another opportunity in the NBA.

If he doesn’t, he will have to go down as one of the most snake-bitten first-round picks in recent NBA history.

First of all, he was never really accepted by the Philadelphia fans.  That’s because, on draft night of 2018, the 76ers selected hometown product Mikal Bridges out of Villanova at no. 10 overall only to trade him to the Phoenix Suns for Smith, who was the no. 16 pick.

Since then, Bridges has gone on to be a solid NBA player who has made over 80 starts for the Suns while Smith has appeared in only 13 NBA games total making 76er fans resent the trade that brought him to town.  What’s worse for Smith is that along the way, he nearly lost his life.

Smith’s run of terrible luck began in August of 2018, just a month after the draft when he broke a bone in his foot during a workout.  However, he was expected to return to the court around mid-December thus giving him plenty of time to salvage his rookie season.

That didn’t happen though because, in September of that year, he had a life-threatening food allergy reaction to something he ate at the 76ers practice facility.  The result was a weeks-long stay in the hospital, emergency heart surgery, the insertion of chest tubes, and the loss of nearly 40 pounds of body weight.  Needless to say, that put an end to his rookie season.

Smith would spend the vast majority of the 2019-20 season trying to get his game back in order in the NBA G League.  His task was to try to learn how to play shooting guard at the professional level after playing center in high school (despite being only 6-foot-2 at the time) and playing a hybrid power-forward role in his lone season at Texas Tech.

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In 28 games that season with the Delaware Blue Coats, he averaged 13.5 points and 3.1 rebounds per game while shooting 37.6% from 3-point range.  Many thought that might have been good enough to warrant some time with the 76ers in the Orlando bubble after the league’s restart but with Philadelphia trying to secure an advantageous seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs and with Smith recovering from a deep bone bruise in his knee, he was not afforded the opportunity to even travel with the team to Disney World.

Now, there is new leadership in Philadelphia with former Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey taking over as the president of the organization.  And one of the first moves the new boss made was to ship Smith to Detroit, where he will reportedly be waived.

It’s been a sad and frustrating turn of events for one of the most electrifying players in the history of Texas Tech basketball.  In his lone season as a Red Raider, Smith put up 11.3 points and 5 rebounds per contest and developed from the no. 194 player in his recruiting class to a first-round pick and in the process becoming the first one-and-done player to ever come through Lubbock.

But it is fair to wonder if Smith would have been better served to stay in school for another year.  While the riches of the NBA are almost never passed up when players have an opportunity to cash in, especially those that know they will be first-round picks meaning that their rookie deals will be guaranteed, Smith’s long-term future might have been more well-served by staying in Lubbock where he could have worked on his game as a true wing, the position he is built to play at the professional level.

The good news for Smith is that he is only 21 years old and he has tons of basketball ahead of him (provided that his run of bad luck is now in the past).  But unfortunately, he’s now saddled with the label of “first-round bust” and that could keep other teams in the NBA from giving him a shot.

Indeed, it is hard to envision him being signed to another team’s roster as the G League seems like it might be his best option for rehabilitating his career.  Of course, plenty of former Texas Tech basketball stars have made a great living playing professionally on the international circuit.  Such legends as Andre Emmett, Jarrius Jackson, Martin Zeno, and now, Davide Moretti have all done well for themselves playing overseas and that could be an option for Smith as well.

However, if his NBA career is over, it will always be a shame given that circumstances beyond Smith’s control essentially took him out of the league before he even got his feet wet.  Of course, every Red Raider hopes Smith gets another shot in the Association but if he doesn’t, he will go down as one of the most unlucky players to come out of the college ranks in quite some time.