Lang’s World: Perfectly Sekou
Lang WhitakerYou saw it on Tuesday afternoon, after news of the death of Sekou Smith found its way onto social media. Within minutes, Sekou Smith was trending on Twitter, with people raving about him, both as a person and a professional. People who had only met him once talked about how Sekou had made them feel like old friends. Colleagues professed the joy Sekou brought to their day whenever they ran into him on the road. It was perfectly Sekou. I could only smile ruefully, watching Sekou get the tributes he deserved, while also recognizing he was not here to receive that praise.
Those who are elite at their jobs make it look easy. Sekou had many traits that made him such a tremendous journalist, which he masked with his ability to make it all seem effortless. Sekou could talk to anyone—I saw him chat up everyone from truck stop waitresses to NBA MVPs—but he also had an ability to listen, to get you to talk to him. He could win your confidence and make you feel comfortable enough to confide in him. He was masterful at garnering information, knowing how much of that he could reveal, and how to be write and speak critically while remaining fair.
It may not have seemed like it, but Sekou was constantly working sources and seeking information. I still remember one year around the trade deadline, while Sekou and I were recording a podcast, and he got a call from an NBA front office member, letting him know about a trade that was about to happen and explaining the team’s thinking, so we could provide context on the air. It may have seemed easy, but there were years of building that friendship and trust before that GM picked up that phone to make that call.
Sekou had an innate ability to get people to trust him, which in turn led to some of his biggest wins as a journalist. He loved to tell the story of when he was working one of his first jobs at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, and someone invited him to a dinner at the home of Ole Miss legend Archie Manning. Sekou charmed the Mannings, of course, and a few days later, Sekou was sitting at his desk when the phone rang: It was Archie Manning, wondering if Sekou would want to announce in his paper that Archie’s youngest son, Eli, was going to sign to play football at Ole Miss. Which was how Sekou ended up with one of the biggest college recruiting scoops of the year—the news literally found him, which was perfectly Sekou.
I was familiar with Sekou’s byline from his time in Indiana, covering the Pacers. But when he and his family moved to Atlanta to cover the Hawks for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we connected, and immediately, we connected. Soon after, Sekou and I ran into each other on the road in Miami. One night after a game, he asked me to take him for some Cuban food—my Cuban wife had left me with a cheat sheet. We went to Versailles on Calle Ocho, where we lingered late into the night. The next day I made sure he found his first cup of cafe con leche, sparking what became a bit of an obsession for Sekou.
If there was one thing Sekou was elite at, it was talking. I’m pretty sure that I spent more time talking about the NBA with Sekou than I have with any person, ever. Which is why I think we were such good teammates when he asked me to cohost the Hang Time Podcast: We were just doing what we always did—talking about the NBA—but now we were recording the conversations and letting people listen to us chat away.
And the damn thing caught on. Soon we were getting promoted on “Inside the NBA,” and the great Rick Fox joined as a third member of our quirky crew. (We liked to joke that between the three of us, we had won three NBA championships.) Before long, we embarked on The Hang Time Road Trip, several long jaunts around the country on a huge tour bus with our names printed on the side, which we thought was wild but also secretly kind of awesome. You can say you know someone, but until you live with a person for weeks at a time on a bus, I can promise that you don’t really know them. We traveled around interviewing NBA players and coaches, and in between sat on that bus making fun of each other, trying to sneak videos of each other snoring, telling stories about our kids, and mostly just joking and laughing about life. (I remember once asking Sekou if he wanted to go to church on a Sunday morning, and he said he was a devoted parishioner at “the Church of St. Mattress.”) I heard so much about his wife and her hobbies, his kids and their Smyrna Spartans little league football team, all while Sekou grilled me about my family and my parents and how we were doing.
This week’s outpouring of love for Sekou was deserved, though I must confess to being mildly amused at some of the descriptions of Sekou as someone who was always in a joyful mood. Because if you really knew Sekou, you knew that he could also occasionally be delightfully cranky, and it was usually hilarious to witness. There was the time, for instance, that Sekou threatened to beat up a cameraman who shoved his way in front of us in a crowded locker room, despite the camera guy having a good 10 inches and 50 pounds on Sekou. Later, when Sekou asked why I hadn’t intervened, I admitted it was because I couldn’t stop laughing.
There was the time Sekou had to file a report card for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for a rebuilding Atlanta Hawks team. Sekou had become friendly with then-Hawks coach Mike Woodson, which could have made for a delicate situation. I asked Sekou what he was going to do, and he said he’d discussed it with Woodson, who told him to feel free to write whatever he wanted. So, Sekou wrote that Woodson deserved an F, right there in the newspaper. I always thought it was a credit to both Woodson and Sekou that they remained friends.
There was the time we had Hall of Famer Bill Walton as a guest on our podcast, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Walton just would not stop talking, blowing right past his scheduled out time. It reached the point where Sekou and I were texting each other off-camera, wondering what we were supposed to do. Eventually we had to get our producer to hang up on Walton. Once we reached a stopping point, we belly laughed for about ten minutes.
There was the year Sekou showed up for Hawks media day after spending the offseason committed to exercising, and as a result losing a lot of weight. Hawks forward Josh Smith quietly asked me if Sekou had had his stomach stapled. I immediately told Sekou, of course, and he went and roasted Smoove about his suspiciously perfect new dental work.
There was the year at the All-Star Game when Sekou and I played in a pickup basketball game with a bunch of random celebrities, including the rapper Jadakiss. Sekou volunteered to guard Jadakiss, and for most of the game it was a rather inconsequential matchup. Then, suddenly, Jadakiss caught fire. Like, he was Steph Curry hot. Sekou was sticking with him, but Jadakiss was knocking down shots from everywhere. I suppose we should have sent some help for Sekou, but watching Jadakiss torch him was as hilarious as it was astonishing, so we left him on Jadakiss island. Finally, with the game on the line, Jadakiss drained a game-winning three, then ran to midcourt and kneeled down in Tim Tebow’s signature celebration. You could see Sekou just behind him, shaking his head.
(A few years later, Sekou bumped into Jadakiss at the Atlanta airport, and Jadakiss immediately recognized Sekou and brought up that game. Heck, it was probably the greatest moment of Jadakiss’s sporting life. We were just lucky to witness it up close.)
When Adam Silver released his lovely statement eulogizing Sekou, it reminded me of a night at the All-Star Weekend in New Orleans, which was Commissioner Silver’s first big event since taking over for David Stern. Sekou and I had spent the first few days interviewing dozens of players live on camera, and by Saturday night we were both exhausted. We were going to skip the dunk contest and three-point shootout, but at the last minute Sekou convinced me to walk over to the arena with him. We could just go casual, Sekou argued, not even bringing our laptops, just take in a low-key night and enjoy the events. I threw on a baseball hat and some sweats, and with Sekou similarly informally dressed, we strolled over to the arena. And of course, the moment we walked through the media entrance, we literally bumped into our new boss, Adam Silver, in a beautiful navy suit, with us standing there dressed like a couple of fans. We greeted him feebly, embarrassed, though we were able to laugh about it later.
There were surreal moments, too, like when Phife from A Tribe Called Quest reached out to tell us he was a fan of our podcast and wanted to visit with us in person on our Road Trip. Sekou and I had interviewed pretty much everyone that was to talk to in NBA circles, from Larry Bird to Kevin Durant, from Charles Barkley to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but a founding member of Tribe? Wanting to hang with us? That one blew our minds.
When Ray Allen hit his historic three-pointer at the end of Game 6 during the 2013 NBA Finals, I was sitting next to Sekou. I remember us grabbing each other’s arms as the ball was in the air, spinning toward the rim, just knowing that there was no possible way that shot was going to go in. And then it went in.
There were also so many quieter, thoughtful moments, like last year when Sekou came to visit me in Memphis, and we grabbed breakfast and talked about our lives and growing older. His kids were going off to college, and Sekou talked about wanting to get more involved in the journalism program at his alma mater, Jackson State. Which was perfectly Sekou, always willing to help those who came after him.
A few hours after Sekou passed, I picked up my phone to make a call, and my phone was on the “Favorites” screen, and right there was Sekou’s name and number. It served as a harsh reminded that I would never be able to call him again. But I will also never remove him from my Favorites. My phone is filled with photos of Sekou and me all over the United States—on the Road Trip, at All-Star Weekends, at various NBA Finals. We hit all of these places ostensibly to cover basketball, but we always somehow got into something else, something funny, something meaningful. Sekou was that person in my life with whom I could talk about things that we didn’t really otherwise speak on publicly—politics, race, religion. We never actually lived in the same city, but we shared a similar mental geography. How I loved spending time with him.
Late on Tuesday afternoon, my son asked my wife why my eyes were watering so much. I sat down with my son and I told him the truth: I was crying because I was sad, I was oh so sad. Because my friend was gone.
And I was certain that I would never again meet anyone as special as Sekou Smith.
Published on Jan 29, 2021
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