COMMENTARY
Braves’ Smith trades blocks for barbecue
Bob DiCesare
Updated: 05/05/08 6:37 AM
If you still have a soft spot in your heart for the Buffalo Braves this is for you. If names such as McAdoo and Randy and Ernie D make you wistful then some of the memories might come creeping back.
A few weeks ago, while walking through a Hamburg butcher shop, I spotted bottles of “Elmore Smith’s All- Natural BBQ Sauce” sitting atop a counter. My initial reaction — “It couldn’t possibly be that Elmore Smith” — gave way to the deduction: “How many Elmore Smith’s could there possibly be?”
I pulled down a bottle and began reading the label: “During my time in the NBA . . .”
It’s him!
Smith spent two seasons with the Braves, who selected him with the third overall pick in the 1971 NBA draft. A 7- foot force out of obscure Kentucky State, he made the NBA’s all-rookie team and set franchise rebounding records that endured through the team’s departure from Buffalo. He’d probably hold the blocked shots standard, too, except that they didn’t start keeping the stat until 1973-74, the season after Smith was traded to the Lakers. He swatted 17 shots in a game against Portland that year, an NBA record that still stands.
Smith’s time with the expansion Braves may have been short but his connection to Buffalo is eternal. Never mind the trade to the Lakers. The best deal Smith was a part of came when he cashed in his bachelorhood following a union cultivated during his time with the team.
“It was a lot of fun; I enjoyed the experience,” Smith said by phone from Cleveland last week. “As a matter of fact, I married a girl from Buffalo [the former Jessica Moore]. We’ll be married 36 years this year. So we’re constantly visiting the area. My wife still has relatives in the area and I found out as years went by that I have relatives there too.”
The Braves won fewer than 30 games a season during Smith’s tenure, then caught fire after he was sent to the Lakers for forward Jim McMillan. The unpopular deal paid off because it enabled Bob McAdoo’s move to center, where his mobility and range fueled his ascent to the league scoring championship. Meanwhile, Buffalo State’s Randy Smith, drafted the same year as Elmore, evolved into one of the NBA’s more dynamic forces.
“I keep in touch with Randy and Mc- Adoo,” Smith said. “And every now and then I’ll come across some guys who like to come here and visit in the summertime when they’re playing in some of the golf classics. I’m intending to get in touch with more of them as time goes on because we’re not getting any younger.”
Smith, 59, launched his barbecue sauce venture in August after decades of backyard cookouts played to rave reviews. The spicy variation is featured in a sandwich available at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena and will be sold at the Georgia Hall of Fame. Smith, a Macon native, was inducted earlier this year.
“Well, I’ve been doing this since ’74, when I played with the Lakers,” he said. “My wife and I used to have guests over from time to time and one of those times I made some barbecue sauce cooking out on the grill and it seemed like everybody liked it. I would get requests from different friends to send it to them and it never stopped. Even though I live back in Ohio I still get requests from friends to send them sauce. It got to be too expensive to continue to do it that way so I decided to market it.”
Smith said he’ll be in Buffalo more often as he attempts to get his sauce (which is awesome, by the way) into the major supermarkets. One thing’s for certain. Three and a half decades later he still has name-recognition value in these parts.
