Adrian Smith

Adrian Howard "Odie" Smith was an American professional basketball player born October 5, 1936, in Farmington, Kentucky, and died April 28, 2026. The fifth of six children of Oury and Ruth Smith, he grew up in a farmhouse without electricity or indoor plumbing and attended a three-room schoolhouse in rural Graves County. Because the family could not afford a basketball, he learned to shoot using one his mother fashioned from rolled-up socks. He was nicknamed "Odie" after a comedian on the Grand Ole Opry.

Smith played college basketball at Northeast Mississippi Community College and at Kentucky, winning the 1958 NCAA championship with the latter. The Cincinnati Royals selected him with the 85th pick in the 1958 NBA draft. After serving in the U.S. Army, he joined the Royals in 1961 and went on to play ten seasons in the NBA and one in the ABA.

In his lone NBA All-Star appearance, in 1966, Smith was named the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player. Internationally, he was a member of the United States national team that won gold at the 1959 Pan American Games in Chicago and at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.