‘Carrot’ Takes On New Meaning for Smith

Carrot is the magic word Charles Smith uses as if he expected the duck to come down from the ceiling and award him $100. It’s the word all the New York Knickerbockers slip into their conversation and analysis, just after “focus.”

It’s Coach Pat Riley’s word, of course. It’s the old carrot on the end of the stick. He is trying to focus so many ego needs and ego demands and make them come out carrot soup. Or a championship.

Psychologists identify that as enlightened self-interest. Basketball is a game of self-interest or ego, call it what you like. Smith brought enough ego with him. Riley did the enlightening.

Smith doesn’t have to like everything about the enlightening, but he’ll accept the wisdom involved. That’s what coaching is -- the will and the won’t.

It calls for considerable sacrifice of ego. “Big-time sacrifice,” Smith said. “It sacrifices my ego. It sacrifices my knowing I can go out there and get the job done. There’s a lot of sacrifices. That’s the whole thing. The bottom line is playing with an unselfish attitude.”

That means Smith let a pained expression betray him for a moment when he was summarily removed in the first quarter of the first game against Charlotte and sat most of the rest of it -- and then dropped the issue in favor of a higher goal. “I got to keep my mind on the carrot,” Smith reflected Wednesday night when they played the second game of the second round, against Charlotte.

“The bottom line is not what it used to be. I’m not where I was a starter and knew I was going to play 35 minutes a game no matter what.”

When he shot and missed for the Los Angeles Clippers, he kept shooting. In the final game of the Knicks’ first-round series against the Indiana Pacers, he made 2 of 12 shots, but there is little room for error here.

In Sunday’s opener of the second round, the Knicks were being disrupted by the swarming Hornets. Riley set up a play and Smith wound up taking what wasn’t supposed to be his shot. And Smith was out.

He played 43 minutes and scored 24 points in the opener against Indiana and has played mostly less than 20 minutes since. Riley goes with what’s working, with the exception of Ewing and Starks.

“It’s tough for me to be in that situation,” Smith said. “I’m here to fit a role for a specific team at a specific time. I was brought here to help the team win a championship.”

All his life, which means Harding High School in Bridgeport, University of Pittsburgh and the Clippers, the plays were called for him. That’s how egos are constructed.

He was the star of the performance and now he is a supporting actor. They all are in this system. “Basically I’m here to do what I’m told to do,” he said.

Or, as Riley explained: “Our system is designed to get shots for the 5 and the 2, and the 3 gets less.” In the basketball jargon in vogue, 5 is the center, Patrick Ewing, and 2 is the shooting guard, John Starks. The 3 is the small forward, which is Smith, and sometimes the odd-man out.

In four seasons Smith averaged 18.4 points a game, and in two of them averaged more than 20, and finished deep in the standings. There is a difference between playing on winners and being a star on also-rans.

Smith struggled with his role with the Knicks. He forced himself into Riley’s uncompromising pattern. The coach demands that Smith get his own shots with motion and effort and in the transition of the game.

In the last two weeks, when the Knicks held off the Chicago Bulls’ challenge to finish with the best record in the East, Smith was at his best, knifing for the basket, putting up a soft jumper and exploiting vertically challenged men at the post. He adapted to covering smaller, quicker men. He blanketed Scottie Pippen in the regular-season finale against Chicago.

He played 15 minutes against Charlotte and sat 33. “I get frustrated,” he said. “I get over it. I go home and get over it.”

Introspection is a rare quality in an athlete. Mostly he’s trained not to look too deeply because he may recognize human doubts. Smith is one of the more observant, more expressive athletes. His basic expression is pensive. Much of his life outside of basketball is pointed toward educating children.

He started the Charles Smith Education Center in Bridgeport last summer. He teaches children that “sports is temporary, and education is a lifetime.” The conflict is that at this point in his lifetime basketball is his focus, and he used to be a star.

“What friends and fans don’t understand is what’s going on inside,” Smith said. “They ask why I’m not getting more minutes. They tell me: You can do this and you can do that. They don’t know about Coach Riles. This is the situation.”

After removing Smith in the opener, Riley kneeled in front of him and quietly re-explained his facts of life. “I took him out not to make a point of him but to make a point to him,” Riley said. “If Patrick had taken that shot, I would have taken him out.”

Of course, the play made Ewing the first option to score, but the situation was one of trying to settle an offense that was being disrupted and forced out of its power game into the Hornets’ run and sting. Smith’s job was to move the ball.

Against a very stubborn Charlotte, there is this struggle to set an opposing pace. The Knicks want to play half-court power and the Hornets want to run. Smith is 6-10, the tallest of small forwards, and has what Riley calls “length.” If he can score early, it forces the Hornets to go to a bigger, slower lineup. If Johnny Newman gets hot or if the defense bothers the Knicks again, they go to Anthony Mason, who handles the ball well.

“It’s a matter of who gets to who first,” Smith said. “Does he blow by me or do I force them to change first.

“Whether I like it or not, I have to accept it and help us achieve the goal,

It is his pledge of allegiance. He will be an unrestricted free agent after the season. Instead of looking to showcase himself to the world, he expects to sign a long-term contract with the Knicks.

“I don’t want to blow up what this team has going,” he said. “I don’t want to say I can play 38 minutes a game, average 20 points and eight boards. I’ve done that before.

“I prefer to win a championship. I prefer to do whatever I have to do.”

He’ll chase the carrot.