Joe Smith

Joseph Leynard Smith (born July 26, 1975) is an American former professional basketball player.

A power forward, he played for 12 teams in the National Basketball Association (NBA) during his 16-year career.

Born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, Smith was the College Player of the Year at Maryland in 1995 and the No. 1 pick of that season's NBA draft, picked by the Golden State Warriors.

He was named to the 1995–96 All-Rookie team.

Smith was mobile throughout his career, as he was one of the most traded players in league history.

On March 2, 1995, Smith scored a collegiate career high 40 points and made a game winning tip in shot during a 94-92 victory over Duke.

In the 1995 NBA draft, Smith was selected by the Golden State Warriors as the first overall pick, before fellow power forwards Kevin Garnett, Antonio McDyess and Rasheed Wallace, as well as guard Jerry Stackhouse.

On November 30, 1995, Smith scored his highest single game point total of his rookie season, with 30 points in a 125-121 loss to the Atlanta Hawks.

At the end of the year, after starting all 82 games, Smith was named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team for the 1995–96 season and finished third in the Rookie of the Year voting to Damon Stoudamire and Arvydas Sabonis.

The following season, Smith would average a career best 18.7 points per game, second on the team only to Latrell Sprewell's 24.2 points per game.

On January 20, 1996, Smith grabbed a career high 20 rebounds, while also scoring 21 points, during a 110-102 loss to the Charlotte Hornets.

On January 8, 1997, Smith scored a career high 38 points in a 109-95 loss to the Vancouver Grizzlies.

For the second season in a row, however, the Warriors would again miss the postseason, this time with a 30-52 record.

Smith would play 2 1⁄2 years for the Warriors before being traded to the Philadelphia 76ers with Brian Shaw for Clarence Weatherspoon and Jim Jackson midway through the 1997–98 season.

The trade was engineered by Golden State as Smith had made clear his desire to return to the east coast, and he was approaching free agency (halfway through the final year of his 3-year rookie contract).

Smith turned down a multi year $80+ million contract with the Warriors.

He made a reported $61 million over his career.

In 1998, Smith was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers; he then played for the Minnesota Timberwolves (with a midway pitstop for the Detroit Pistons) until 2003.

He later played for the Milwaukee Bucks, the Denver Nuggets, the 76ers again, the Chicago Bulls, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Atlanta Hawks, the New Jersey Nets, and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Smith was on the active roster of 12 different teams, which was an NBA record shared with Jim Jackson, Tony Massenburg, Chucky Brown, and Ish Smith; until Ish played with the Denver Nuggets, his 13th team, in the 2022–23 season.

Smith attended Maury High School and played at the University of Maryland.

Smith played for Maryland for two seasons.

As a sophomore, Smith averaged 20.8 points and 10.6 rebounds a game, and was named to the AP NCAA All-America Team.

Despite a drop in production, Smith was seen still as a hot commodity in the free agency blitz that followed the strike in lockout 1998.

In what seemed at the time like a bizarre move, Smith signed for very little money with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

For the next two years, Smith played very productively at small forward alongside All-Star Kevin Garnett.

Following the 1999–2000 season, it was discovered that Smith was involved in a salary cap-evading scandal involving Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale.

Smith was allegedly promised a future multimillion-dollar deal if he signed with the team for below market value, allowing the team to make some additional player moves in the short term.

As part of the deal, Smith signed three one-year contracts for less than $3 million apiece, allowing the Timberwolves to retain his "Bird rights" and exceed the cap to re-sign him.

At the end of the last one-year contract, Smith could have signed a new long-term contract that would have paid as much as $86 million.

The beginning of the end for the illicit deal came when Smith's agent, Andrew Miller, left the sports marketing firm helmed by Eric Fleisher and retained Smith and Garnett as clients.

Fleisher sued, and details of the illegal contract came to light in discovery.

NBA Commissioner David Stern severely punished the Timberwolves in response.

He fined the team $3.5 million and voided all three short-term contracts—and with them, Smith's "Bird rights."

Joe Smith was released by the Timberwolves and signed with the Detroit Pistons for the 2000–01 season as a backup.

He also barred Taylor from having any role in the Timberwolves' operations until August 31, 2001, and forced McHale to take an unpaid leave of absence through July 31, 2001.

More seriously in the long run, Stern stripped the Timberwolves of their first-round draft picks in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 (though the 2003 and 2005 picks were ultimately returned).

Smith produced good numbers for the Pistons and, at the end of the season, he re-signed with his former team the Timberwolves where he played for two more seasons until the end of the 2002-03 NBA season.

In 2003, Smith and teammate Anthony Peeler were traded to the Milwaukee Bucks for Sam Cassell and Ervin Johnson.

The team still found success, culminating in 2004 when the Timberwolves finished with the best record in the Western Conference, and advanced all the way to the Western Conference Finals.