With 44 seconds left between Virginia Commonwealth and Georgia State on Saturday night, Monica King’s game-tracker froze. From her home computer in Madison, Wis., she lost touch with her son, Shaka Smart and his VCU Rams, whose lead had just been cut to 56-50.
Had Smart done last April what so many expected him to do and taken a job at N.C. State after coaching upstart VCU to the Final Four, King could have simply tuned into ESPN2 Saturday to watch him coach State against Virginia.
But to the shock of everybody -- except maybe King -- Smart stayed at VCU, signing an eight-year contract worth $1.2 million annually, almost half of what he would have made at N.C. State.
“A lot of people say, ‘Why didn’t you take the window of opportunity before it closed?’” Smart said. “My response to them is, it’s not like I needed to jump out a window of a burning building. I’m at a really good place in VCU.”
Four of Smart’s top six players were graduating last spring. Nobody would have blamed him had he left for N.C. State or Maryland, which made overtures in May, just like Jeff Capel did leaving VCU for Oklahoma or Anthony Grant, who did the same for Alabama.
But Smart couldn’t stomach facing his players a day or two after the Final Four loss to Butler and telling them he was leaving.
“It’s just a feeling in your gut that one way to go would be right and one way to go wouldn’t,” Smart said.
He doesn't think it makes him loyal and other coaches disloyal. He just knows the grass isn’t always greener.
Smart was 8 years old, a fair-complected biracial son of a white mother and a black father who was a native of Trinidad, when his mother sent him and his older brother Josh on a two-week exchange program to live with a poor black family in Greenville, Miss. She wanted him to experience something different from Wisconsin, where he would be one of only 10 minority students in a high school of 1,200.
In Mississippi, kids made fun of him for his light skin, once holding his head under water at a swimming hole until his brother intervened. Smart came home with vivid memories of a fence separating manicured lawns of the rich white part of town from the hardscrabble side.
“I gritted my teeth,” King said. “[But] I said these kids have got to go because they think, ‘Oh poor me,’ because we didn’t have very much ... I never wanted them to grow up without an understanding of how lucky they are and how other people need our help.”
That experience shaped him. It's why he stayed at his high school, despite racial tensions that almost pushed him to accept a scholarship to a private school. He and his brother wanted to stay and affect change.
“They said, ‘If we leave, nobody will do it,’” King said.
Smart helped organize an annual multicultural celebration and awareness day. He fought his way onto the social studies committee to advocate for including multiple views in curriculum. He even led workshops at a teachers’ convention in Madison.
On the basketball court, he helped others too. He once had 20 assists in a game for Oregon High and finished as its career assists leader (458).
He chose Division III Kenyon College and a bond he formed with Coach Bill Brown there over offers from Harvard, Yale and Brown. During a car ride while visiting Yale, an assistant coach had described the school as a pristine island in the mess of New Haven, with all its ghettos.
“Shaka turned to me and said, ‘Get me out of here,’” King said.
Brown, meanwhile, formed a bond Smart never had with his father, who first left the family when Smart was 2 and left for good when he was 17.
So on the day after his freshman season when Brown called to say he was leaving for Division II California University of Pennsylvania for double the salary, Smart cried. He thought about transferring but ultimately stayed. Why?
“My teammates,” Smart said.
After Smart graduated magna cum laude, Brown hired him as an assistant at California.
Smart, 34, is in his third year at VCU. He coaches games almost in a defensive stance, looking poised to join a trap in front of the VCU bench Saturday at Georgia State. He paced as freshman Briante Weber stepped to the free throw line with 5.3 seconds left. Weber, one of six freshmen Smart recruited, made the first and missed the second, but it accounted for the decisive point. VCU won 59-58.
“You don’t want to run away from happiness,” Smart said afterward, describing what he loves about VCU, his players, the importance of basketball there and how much his wife likes it too. “That’s something to keep in mind in this business.”
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