There were the scouts who didn’t rank him, the college coaches who didn’t offer him a scholarship, the fans who said he wasn’t good enough to play at Louisville.
But Russ Smith’s toughest challenges came from his biggest fan — his father, Russ Smith Sr.
“There were a lot of times I didn’t want to play,” the high-scoring 6-foot-1 guard from Brooklyn said in a phone interview. “I’d tell my mom, ‘I just want to play my video games.’ My dad wasn’t letting that fly. My dad did a great job of making sure I didn’t quit.”
The elder Smith gave his son a basketball at the age of 3, and never took his foot off the gas. He signed up Russ for leagues 3 years old and up. He paid older kids money to defeat Russ in one-on-one games at the playground.
Russ, a basketball always in his hands, basically was raised at Gauchos Gym, home of the powerhouse AAU program, where his dad ran — and still runs — a youth program.
Once, at the age of 8, Russ Sr. woke up his son at 2:30 in the morning, asking if he wanted to work out. Russ hopped out of bed, to the delight of his father, who told him to go back to sleep,
“That’s when I said this kid wants it,” said Russ Sr., 40, who owns Big Russ’ Barber Shop in Harlem and is a filmmaker and part-time actor. “That’s why he’s the player he is today — he never said, ‘Daddy, I’m tired.’ ”
Russ Sr., who played at Division II Molloy College and overseas for one year in Tunisia, stopped coaching his son by the time he became a teenager, but the workouts never softened, after high school and AAU games and practices. If Russ scored 25 points, his father, a self-described basketball “bully,” wanted 30. Or he demanded better defense. More rebounding.
There were pushups when other kids were playing with legos, running the beach at Coney Island in boots while carrying a brick in a backpack, lifting heavy bags, running stairs in 90-degree heat.
“My mom used to say, ‘Stop, you’re killing the boy,’ ” Russ recalled with a laugh.
But Russ, 23, never asked out, thriving on the tough love, and he was rewarded with big meals at their favorite spots in Harlem after workouts.
“The best way to put it is he never let Russ get comfortable,” said Manhattan coach and former Louisville assistant Steve Masiello, a close family friend. “He never let his son feel complacent. Russ Sr.’s mentality was, ‘If you can get through me, you can handle everything.’
“He’s real old school. What I love about his dad is there are no excuses. Just get it done.”
It was the same reaction when Russ wanted to transfer out of Louisville during a trying freshman season in which he appeared in just 17 games. Leaving in the middle of the year? That wasn’t going to happen. Russ Sr. gave his son two options: They could transfer after the year was over or “get back in the lab” and make it work at Louisville.
That summer, Russ and his dad got back to work, running on the beach, lifting weights, hours and hours of training. He returned to Louisville stronger, more determined, more focused.
Russ would thrive off the bench as a sophomore, become a starter and the leading scorer on the national championship team as a junior, and further refine his game as a senior, developing into a more efficient playmaker.
“Everything Russ has [gotten] he earned,” said his soft-spoken mother, Paulette, who served as the changeup to Russ Sr.’s fastball.
Masiello said if he were doling out credit for Russ, 50 percent would go to his dad, the other 25 apiece to Jack Curran, the legendary high school coach at Molloy who died two years ago, and Louisville’s Rick Pitino.
Russ Sr. wasn’t just a demanding dad. He was there for his son at every turn — mostly to motivate, but also to offer a shoulder to cry on when his dearth of scholarship offers got him down at Molloy or a negative article brought him to tears.
“You can’t put a price on that,” Russ said.
Russ has made the most of his opportunities, from Molloy to prep powerhouse South Kent and Louisville. As a result, he is expected to be taken in the second round of Thursday’s NBA Draft.
It wouldn’t be accurate to call this the culmination of a lifelong dream because Russ and his dad never talked about the NBA. He merely wanted to be a good college basketball player. But The League? He laughs at the absurdity of it all.
“I find it really hard to believe,” Russ said.
He said he hopes the NBA is next. And the doubters, of course, are back — the scouts who say he’s too small, he doesn’t have a position, he’s destined for an overseas career.
Russ has heard all of this before, at every step of his Russdiculous career.
“You tell me I can’t do [something], I’m probably going to do it,” he said. “That’s the way I was built.”
His father was the architect, refusing to take no for an answer. And now their unspoken dream is nearly reality.