LaBradford Smith had a mostly forgettable career after the Washington Bullets selected the Louisville guard with the 19th pick of the 1991 NBA draft, but he’ll always have March 19, 1993. That’s the night he erupted for a career-high 37 points against the Chicago Bulls at Chicago Stadium, a performance that left Michael Jordan feeling so embarrassed that he set out to match Smith’s total in the first half of the teams’ rematch the following night at Capital Centre. His Airness fell one point short.
The story of Smith’s career game and Jordan’s revenge 24 hours later was featured in Sunday’s eighth episode of “The Last Dance,” ESPN’s 10-part documentary that focuses on the 1997-98 Bulls. It’s a perfect example of Jordan’s unmatched ability to motivate himself, sometimes inventing slights in his mind where none exist.
“The shots were just falling for me,” Smith, whose previous career high was 22, told reporters after making 15 of 20 shots in Washington’s 104-99 loss at Chicago. “It happens like that sometimes. Hopefully it’ll happen like that more often. I don’t say nothing to [Jordan]. Leave him alone. In the first couple of quarters he was helping out a lot [defensively on other Bullets] and I was getting a more wide-open shot.”
Jordan finished with a team-high 25 points despite missing 17 of his first 21 shots. He was more concerned with his defensive effort against Smith.
“That was a very embarrassing situation for me,” Jordan said. “Evidently I didn’t respect the guy and he’s certainly capable of putting up some numbers, and he did. Offensively, it wasn’t going for me, and I let that affect my defensive effort, and that’s something I will improve on [Saturday]. I look forward to the challenge.”
Years later, an apocryphal story emerged that Smith approached Jordan after his 37-point outburst in Chicago, extended his hand and said something to the effect of, “Good game, Mike.” The Athletic’s David Aldridge, the Bullets beat reporter for The Washington Post at the time, said the story is “complete BS.” If Smith had said something to insult Jordan that night, either Aldridge or Melissa Isaacson, the Chicago Tribune’s Bulls beat reporter, would have heard about it and made it the focus of their game stories.
“Here’s what I was told did happen: Phil Jackson, looking to motivate his superstar, gave it to Jordan pretty good in the team’s postgame meeting after the first game about getting outclassed by a relative no-name,” Aldridge wrote after Sunday’s episode. “Somehow, that metastasized in Jordan’s brain into Smith dissing him.”
All they had to do was ask me. I was covering the Bullets for the Post. I was with LaBradford, other than the 10-minute cooling off period after the game, that entire night. It was BS. Complete BS.
— David Aldridge (@davidaldridgedc) May 11, 2020
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No matter the source of his motivation, Jordan was dialed in the next day at Capital Centre, and he made his first eight shots in the opening six minutes.
“I certainly wanted to come back and redeem myself,” Jordan said. “What I wanted was to score all 37 that he gave me [Friday] in the first half. That free throw I missed [in the final seconds of the half] was it.”
Jordan had 36 points at halftime and finished with 47 despite sitting for the entire fourth quarter. The Bulls won, 126-101.
“He said he wanted 37 points by halftime,” Scottie Pippen said afterward. “I told him to go for 60.”
“What bothered me [Friday] was the guy came at me and was very aggressive, and my retaliation was terrible,” Jordan told reporters. “I played terrible. I wasn’t prepared for it. … He surprised me with the way he attacked me. I didn’t have any hard feelings toward LaBradford Smith. He really showed people something, that they’ve got a good player. … But I didn’t have any animosity toward him at all. I told B.J. [Armstrong] before the game that it was going to be a personal game, but I won’t take it out of the team concept.”
“He came out, and he was on,” said Smith, who was limited to 15 points in the rematch. “It’s hard enough when he isn’t, but tonight he was on and he burned us.”
Jackson, the Bulls’ coach, didn’t mention a locker room conversation with Jordan the previous night, but he noticed Jordan was playing with an edge.
“He was ready to play tonight and had a bit of a vengeance,” Jackson said. “I think Michael was a little bit upset last night … feeling like he kind of let a young player upstage him.”
Smith, who was waived by the Bullets early in the 1993-94 season, told the Los Angeles Times he learned that he was featured in “The Last Dance” from his nephew, who got an advance look at Sunday’s episode.
“He was like, ‘Unc, you know you’re in “The Last Dance?”’ And I was like, holy [expletive],” Smith said. “I thought I was going to just ease by, they were just going to talk about the championship stuff and all that.”
Smith told Lousville’s WAVE 3 News that he and Jordan have remained friendly over the years, and they like to remind each other of their big nights at each other’s expense on back-to-back days in March 1993. Smith didn’t plan to watch Sunday’s episode live.
“Yeah, I’m going to turn my phone off, and me and my wife will watch it later on,” he said.
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