Heat Assistant Coach Keith Smart Back With Team After Bout With Cancer
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – When basketball fans hear the name Keith Smart, they think of the college kid from Indiana whose clutch shot won a national championship.
But to the Miami Heat, Smart represents inspiration.
Three games into the season, Smart was diagnosed with derma fibro sarcoma protuberans.
"It's a type of skin cancer that only effects of 1 in 1 million people and only 1000 cases in the U-S a year," said Smart.
Smart was forced to take a leave of absence.
Surgeons cut out much of the cancerous skin around his jaw, replacing it with a graft from his leg.
Afterwards, thirty rounds of radiation zapped his strength, but left him cancer free.
Now, the guy the team calls "Smartie" is back just in time for the playoffs.
"He kind of brought us together when he went out, as a team in the locker room and came together and you know kind of that motivation was do it for Smartie," said Heat rookie Justise Winslow.
While recuperating at his California home, Smart was bombarded by text messages and phone calls from Heat players, coaches and staff.
"It just showed me what the overall organization was all about," said Smart. "We are behind you, we're pulling for you, basketball is 2nd nature, we want you to be in the right frame of mind being right help so that you can do what we hire you here to do."
Smart stayed locked in while away, filing long distance coaching reports. Now, the team will allow him to slowly work his way back to the bench.
"He's here for good right now," said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. "He's going to be involved whether he's on the bench or not, he's going to be involved"
Smart says the ordeal has changed his perspective on life, but not his sense of humor.
He recalls asking his wife a brutally honest question.
"Honey I'm looking a little bit different now but overall if I would have come up to you looking like this 25, 28 years ago would you have talked to me? She said 'no I would've told you to keep walking.' I said well truly love does grow over time."
