Jerry Smith (basketball player)

Jerry Smith
Player information
Full name	Jerry Smith Junior
birthday	26th September 1987 (age 32)
place of birth	Wauwatosa , Wisconsin , United States
size	188 cm
position	Point guard
college	Louisville
Club information
society	Polar bears Bremerhaven
league	Basketball Bundesliga
Jersey number	6th
Clubs as active
2006–2010 Louisville Cardinals ( NCAA ) 2010–2012 Springfield Armor → 2011 Waikato Pistons → 2012 New Jersey Nets 2012–2013 Mapooro Cantù 2013–2014 Tezenis Verona 2014–2015 Maccabi Rischon LeZion Since 2015 Eisbären Bremerhaven 000 000 0

Jerry Smith (born September 26, 1987 in Wauwatosa , Wisconsin ) is an American basketball player . After studying in his home country, Smith played in the NBA Development League and, for a few missions, also with the then New Jersey Nets in the highest-endowed professional league NBA . Since 2012 Smith, who was already active in New Zealand in 2011, has been playing in leagues belonging to the continental association FIBA Europe . After two years in Italy and half a season in Israel , Smith has been playing in the top German basketball division for the Eisbären Bremerhaven since February 2015 .

Career

After graduating from high school, Smith received a scholarship from the University of Louisville , where he was trained on the Cardinals college team by the well-known coach Rick Pitino . Smith also decided against a study place at Marquette University , whose location in Milwaukee bordered on his hometown. In Louisville (Kentucky) Smith was playing with the Cardinals in the old Big East Conference of the NCAA . In Smith's season, however, the Cardinals "only" won one tournament in the Big East Tournament 2009. In the national NCAA finals tournament , which the Cardinals had last won before Pitino's time in the 1980s, it was enough to two Elite Eight participations. In the 2008 regional final they lost to the top-seeded tar heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a year later the Cardinals lost to the Spartans of Michigan State University . In Smith's senior year 2010, the Cardinals lost in the first round against the Golden Bears of the University of California, Berkeley, without Terrence Williams and Earl Clark, who had moved to the NBA .

In contrast to the NBA Draft 2009 , when Williams and Clark were selected in the first round, a year later no Cardinals player was selected in the Entry Draft 2010 of the highest-endowed professional league and neither was Smith. After the NBA Summer League at the Milwaukee Bucks in his hometown, Smith got a squad place with the Armor from Springfield (Massachusetts) in the " Minor League " NBA Development League (D-League). Here he played again at the beginning of the season with Williams, who had been briefly posted to the farm team by his NBA club Boston Celtics . After the premature end of the season, when the Armor had once again missed qualifying for the play-offs of this league, Smith played in the southern hemisphere in New Zealand for the Pistons from Waikato , but they were eliminated in the semi-finals of the New Zealand league from the title. After returning to the Armor, Smith was able to play individual games in the NBA in the 2011/12 D-League season, when the team reached the D-League play-offs for the first and only time in club history Recommend New Jersey Nets who now exclusively cooperated with the Armor. In five appearances in the 2011/12 NBA to the end of March 2012, Smith scored a total of seven points, seven rebounds and four assists in a total of 46 minutes for the Nets . Back in the D-League, the Armor and Smith were eliminated in the first play-off round against the Canton Charge .

For the 2012/13 season Smith left his home country and moved to Europe, where he got a contract with the traditional club from Cantù in Lombardy , which had won multiple European Cups in the 1970s and 1980s. The team coached by Andrea Trinchieri had an excellent start to the season and won the Italian Supercoppa on the one hand and the qualification tournament for the top-ranking European club competition on the other, so that the team, which operates internationally as Mapooro , returned to the ULEB Euroleague 2012/13 . In contrast to the previous season, however, it was no longer enough to make it into the second group stage of the 16 best European teams, instead the team was eliminated from the competition with only three wins in ten preliminary round games. Nationally they only finished seventh in the regular season, but in the first play-off round they could intercept the Sardinian surprise team from Sassari in seven games before losing the semi-final series against Acea Rome in the same number of games . The following season Smith got a contract with the second division Tezenis Scaligera from Verona . The former Korac Cup winner from 1998 missed the return to the top division on the third main round place in the following promotion play-offs. Smith then left Italy and switched to the Israeli Ligat ha'Al , in which he played for Maccabi from Rishon LeZion until February 2015 .

At the beginning of February 2015, Israeli Muli Katzurin switched back to the top German basketball division and took over the relegation-threatened polar bears from Bremerhaven as coach . In this position he ensured the engagement of Smith, who came to Germany with Katzurin from Israel. At the end of the season of the basketball Bundesliga 2014/15, among other things, point deductions for the financially struggling competition helped the polar bears to keep their league. After the polar bears slipped back into the table basement for the 2015/16 basketball Bundesliga , Katzurin had to vacate his place in mid-November 2015. Despite the sporting misery, Smith was nominated for the BBL All-Star Game 2016 by his former coach Trinchieri after the failure of Alex Renfroe , after Smith had already received this honor in the D-League 2012.

Web links

• easyCredit BBL - Jerry Smith - player profile on the easyCredit Basketball-Bundesliga website
• Jerry Smith - player profile on basketball-reference.com
• Louisville Athletics: Jerry Smith - Profile on the sports websites of the "U of L" (English, as of 2010)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ex-recruit hits shot that beats Marquette. Chicago Tribune , February 18, 2007, accessed January 9, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Nets Sign D-League All-Star Jerry Smith. (No longer available online.) Excel Sports Management: ExcelSM.com, March 16, 2012, archived from the original on January 9, 2016 ; Retrieved January 9, 2016 (English, media info New Jersey Nets). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.