Boys Hoops: Defending Smith A Difficult Task

It’s the 6-foot-8, 260-pound elephant in the room whenever a team faces Flintridge Prep: Just how on Earth are we supposed to defend Kenyatta Smith?

Smith is a rare specimen in the world of high school basketball. A player that has the tools and the mentality to play with a level of physicality more suited for the college game. He’s big enough and strong enough to bull his way to the basket for high-percentage looks. He also has the skill to score with finesse, on either a quick baseline spin move or a drop step with his back to the basket. And when none of the above is working, Smith can attack the hoop and score on put-backs after crashing the boards.

There’s a plethora of things a defender has to consider whenever matched against Smith in the low post, and all those variables make slowing him down a difficult task.

Four teams have tried and failed to contain Smith during the top-seeded Rebels’ run to the CIF-Sothern Section Division 5AA finals.

Smith’s averaging 20 points a game in the postseason and is shooting 57.4 percent (31-for-54) from the floor. Now with a divisional championship on the line Saturday at Mater Dei High School at 6 p.m., No. 3 Muir is the team with the unenviable task of trying to stop Smith.

“We were going to check with the CIF offices to see if we could bring a step ladder to the game, and that’s one thing we thought of,” Muir coach Dr. Gamal Smalley joked when asked how the Mustangs plan to defend Smith. “Maybe if they allowed us to use a broom. We could hold a broom up — that would help us.”

Unfortunately for the Mustangs, the use of props is not permitted under the CIF bylaws. But as hard as it seems to imagine, there has to be a formula for limiting Smith’s effectiveness. To find out, we went right to source of Muir’s angst.

How would Kenyatta Smith guard Kenyatta Smith?

“If I was a smaller defender guarding myself, I guess I’d follow other teams gameplans the same way and just try to double team me or triple team me,” said Smith, who’ll play at Harvard next year. “If it was someone with a big enough body — because personally, my game is just as much contact in the post as possible — so pretty much the only way to combat that is to be of the same or equal size.”

There aren’t many players in the area that can match Smith’s stature, and most teams have resorted to sending multiple defenders Smith’s way. That’s the approach Flintridge Prep coach Garrett Ohara would opt for if he had to plan for Smith. 

“You’ve got to double team him,” Ohara said. “You’ve got to try to deny him the ball as much as possible. That might mean fronting him in the post, and then sending someone immediately. 

“A lot of teams will run at him once he puts the ball on the floor. That’s what teams have found a little bit successful once he dribbles it and puts it down where the little guys can get it. You need to run at him and push him out a little bit further and make him shoot 8-foot jumpers instead of 2-foot jump hooks.”

Easier said than done. You might have been able to push Smith around the post back when he was what Ohara called a “tall but skinny” freshman, but now you would not have as much luck.

“He didn’t have a strong base underneath so he could get pushed around,” Ohara said of the younger Smith. “He would fall quite a bit, lose his legs."

Smith eventually grew into his body with the help of trainer Niko Fontanilla at The Performance Edge. For the past two years Smith has worked out with Fontanilla three to four times a week during the offseason. The 90-minute sessions revolve around plyometric workouts designed to increase speed and strength.

“He’s helped me put up my weight and also able to maintain it,” Smith said. “We do box jumps, a lot of speed drills, a lot of stuff to really increase your jumping ability and your strength at the same time.”

On occasion Flintridge Prep senior forward Jared Norsworthy gets to experience the effects of those workouts first hand when the two are matched up in practice.

“He normally wins (those matchups),” said Norsworthy, who gives up about 100 pounds to Smith. “I try to use my speed and quickness to poke at the ball a little bit, and make sure he can’t go up with it like he wants to. He normally wins, but what can you do.”

That’s the question Muir’s faced all week: what can you do?

Smalley said he’ll start the game with sophomore Taturs Mayberry (6-foot-4, 220 pounds) on Smith.

“He’ll be a junior or senior by the end of the night,” Smalley said.

In certain situations — like when Smith puts the ball on the floor — you can expect the Mustangs to send extra defenders Smith’s way. But Smalley said the biggest key would be their ability to beat Smith to the point of attack and make it difficult for him to get in position close to the basket.

“You have to use your low center of gravity, and you have to get their first,” Smalley said. “You have to use your quickness and you have to anticipate.

“He can’t just push you away. He’s not unstoppable. And when we’ve played him in scrimmage games the last couple of years he hasn’t dominated us ever. He has not done that against us, where he just dominated the paint and scored 35.”

But it’s one thing to find success in a scrimmage setting. Games are an entirely different animal. And with the school’s first ever CIF-SS basketball championship at his finger tips, you can be sure that Smith’s ready to throw down the gauntlet. 

“Everybody is excited, everything we’ve worked for is right here,” Smith said. “We’ve only made CIF finals three teams and never won a ring, it’s big time for us. I think everybody wants it badly, more than any other team before. So I think we’re going to get it.”