By now, we’re used to the lore of UCLA basketball containing inadequate endings.
There were three straight trips to the Final Four, none of which resulted in UCLA’s 12th national title. Scores of players left school early for the NBA, turning down years we thought we had them as Bruins once they realized the payday they had worked for.
Then there’s the handful ““ eight players in the last four years, to be exact ““ who, for one reason or another, found out Westwood wasn’t the place for them anymore and left to write the rest of their stories elsewhere.
The latest in that series of abrupt departures is Joshua Smith. His announcement Wednesday that he would leave the program is different than the ones before him, in that his entire UCLA career was a series of cliffhangers.
We waited and waited for him because of that dreaded p-word that followed him throughout his time at UCLA: potential.
There was reason to believe he would be the latest Bruin to leave for the pros before completing a four-year college career. He had the size and the hands to keep NBA scouts salivating and opposing coaches scheming.
Smith’s greatest asset was also a curse. That wide frame he used to bully opponents in the paint only got wider. He remained listed at 305 pounds on the UCLA roster throughout each of his two-plus years, and the story could have read a lot differently if only that number had dropped.
Smith showed up to UCLA in the summer of 2010 and immediately gave the struggling program hope. We saw a player that consistently improved as the season went on. His per-game minutes rose, he committed fewer fouls and he was key to UCLA reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament.
By the end of the year, he was included in NBA draft projections. The only red flag in the scouting reports was his conditioning.
A year and a half later, when UCLA coach Ben Howland talked about granting Smith his release, he mentioned that he believed Smith could still play effectively, if only he works on his conditioning.
Since the end of that stellar freshman campaign, Smith constantly had UCLA’s coaches and dieticians in his ear about losing weight. It became a seasonlong project for each of two years, during which he worked on his eating habits and stayed after practices to get extra running in.
Smith comfortably handled every question about his fitness and at times seemed totally committed to getting in shape. He joked about running around the Drake Stadium track with other students staring in awe. He talked about regulating his eating schedule and buying a Magic Bullet blender this summer to make smoothies.
There were also times when it was fair to question his commitment. If you lived on the Hill any time between 2010 and 2012, there was a good chance of spotting Smith eating some of the unhealthy fare Rendezvous offers.
Eating at Rendezvous is no crime (if it is I hope there is a statute of limitations) and Rendezvous certainly wasn’t the only reason that Smith didn’t play to his potential.
Still, for someone who constantly had coaches and dieticians in one ear and NBA talent evaluators in the other talking about his weight and the way he was eating, turning to unhealthy Rendezvous options was not indicative of a player on the right path.
Even Howland, known to poke fun at his overweight players going back to the days of Kevin Love, joked in a commercial: “Josh Smith can eat a whole rib in 4.8 seconds.” (It never aired on television but lives on YouTube.)
He was so valuable on the court that Howland decided UCLA was better off with Smith as a reserve, a move designed to keep him out of foul trouble. In fact, his final stat line as a Bruin might have summed up his career perfectly: just nine minutes played, with twice as many fouls (four) as points (two).
What gave everyone ““ the fans, the coaches and the scouts ““ so much hope was how utterly dominant he looked when he played, a starter in performance, with the minutes of a lightly used backup. Many noted that no one could guard Smith one-on-one.
There’s somewhat of an expectation that improving players will continue to do so in the dull months of the offseason. The reasoning went like this: With a couple of months to himself to work on his game and conditioning, Smith would truly dominate games.
That was never the case with Smith. No matter how much work he put in ““ and this offseason, as I wrote in this column, it appeared to be plenty and he looked great ““ by the start of each season he had regressed.
His stats were down nearly across the board last season. In six games this season, he was still making the same mistakes on offense and committing the same fouls that resigned him to the bench once again.
Did he ever have his heart in the game? Even he admitted that the passion wasn’t always there. This summer, he talked about how baseball was his first love, before he grew to the point where everyone around him told him he’d be better of on the hardwood than the diamond.
With four fresh faces joining the team this season, he was no longer Howland’s offensive focal point. Howland made the decision to run a faster-paced offense. He had four athletic freshmen and one speedy, newly eligible transfer in mind. Not Smith. His departure is only significant in that it reduces UCLA to just eight scholarship players, who will each have to pick up extra minutes.
Now, Smith is no longer UCLA’s problem. The coaching staff won’t have to devote any more time to adjusting the defensive strategy for him, or reminding him to work on his conditioning, and the Bruins can quickly forget him by playing a style of basketball that wouldn’t have suited Smith anyway.
Should we be surprised it ended like this? No, although Smith’s ending is particularly unsatisfying because of all that was invested in his promise.
Will he ever reach that potential? The Bruins will never know.
With Smith now in UCLA’s rearview, it looks like we were just writing the story of an unwilling protagonist, waiting for a fitting conclusion that never came.
Email Menezes at rmenezes@media.ucla.edu