Columbus Legend: Katie Smith

Katie Smith is a Basketball Hall of Famer and one of the greatest women's hoopers of all time. Her resume includes three gold medals, four pro championships and numerous individual awards.

By the Numbers | In the Pros | Career Highlights | International Play | Coaching

Early Life

In 1974, Katie Smith arrived in this world in a home that was about two things: Sports and teeth. Smith’s parents included an Ohio University football player and dentist John Smith Jr., who raised a family of athletes. Sandwiched between older brother John, who won an NCAA Division III championship with the Mount Union Purple Raiders of Northeast Ohio and younger brother Tom who competed in track and field and football at Ohio University, Katie went the basketball route.

Smith began her hall-of-fame playing career in fifth grade, playing on a boys’ basketball team while also taking part in dance and ballet lessons. With few opportunities for girls to compete outside of their local school district, Smith saw a future as a dentist, not envisioning the career she’d end up having on the court.

A star at Logan High School, Smith walked away with every school scoring record. Leading Logan in scoring each season, Smith scored 2,740 points in four years, still a school record to this day. Plus, most rebounds in a career (813) and the most points in a game against Athens in the 91-92 season (50). In the school’s girls’ basketball history, Smith owns 18 of the top 20 single game scoring performance records. 

When it came time to choose a school, the 1992 Gatorade Player of the Year for Ohio didn’t follow in the footsteps of her green and white Ohio University family members. Instead, Smith took the short trip from Logan, Ohio to Columbus as a member of the Ohio State women’s basketball team.

Ohio State University

It didn’t take Smith long to make a name for herself with the Buckeyes. The shooting guard/small forward started all 32 games for the scarlet and gray, leading the team in points per game (18.1), free throw percentage (80%) and three-point percentage (80%). Immediately integrated into a team of upperclassmen, Smith and the Buckeyes took the 1993 season all the way to the NCAA Championship game. Smith and Ohio State faced a juggernaut in Texas Tech’s Sheryl Swoopes. The Buckeyes lost 84-82 in its lone trip to the title game, behind a 47-point performance by Swoopes.

The rest of Smith’s college season featured her as the linchpin of the team, bringing up a new generation of Buckeyes. While there was a learning curve for the team, who didn’t make the tournament again until 1996, Smith continued to excel individually. Smith led Ohio State in points for each of her next three years as a Buckeye, ending her Big Ten career with a trophy shelf’s worth of accolades. Bookending her career, Smith started by winning the 1993 Freshman of the Year and ending with a 1996 Big Ten Player of the Year honor, finishing with a then conference record 2,578 career points.

Between those awards, Smith received multiple All-Big Ten spots, Academic All-Big Ten and a coveted spot as an All-American and 1996 co-Academic All-American of the year. When you look up into the rafters of the Schottenstein Center on Ohio State’s campus, Smith’s banner is hanging in it as the first member of the women’s basketball team to have her number retired.

Columbus Quest

After Smith graduated with a degree in Zoology, she applied to Ohio State’s dental school. In the meantime, the world of professional women’s basketball in the United States was changing. Following the sweeping success of the 1996 Team USA Gold Medal women’s basketball team (a team where Smith was listed as an alternate), two leagues formed to capitalize on the stars of that team including Swoopes and other legends of the game like Dawn Staley and Lisa Leslie. Smith saw one of them, the American Basketball League, as a viable option to make some money on the side while still living in Central Ohio and pursuing the stable career of dentistry.

Smith joined the local ABL franchise, the Columbus Quest. In two full seasons with the Quest, Smith continued her tear. In the 96-97 season, Smith was only behind 1996 Olympian Nikki McCray in scoring as the Quest won the first of two straight league championships. With McCray leaving after one season, Smith returned to the Quest to lead the team to that second title.

Unfortunately for the players of the ABL, it ceased operations partway through the 98-99 season, but by the time it was over, Smith already moved to the league that overtook it: The Women’s National Basketball Association.

WNBA Career

On May 3, 1999, the move from the dentist chair to fulltime on the court was clear. That’s the day the Minnesota Lynx, an expansion team, selected Smith in a player allocation draft. While this time it took a season for the guard to adjust on an expansion team facing established WNBA sides, Smith’s second season showed the start of a historic professional run.

Coached by former Columbus Quest coach Brian Alger, the Lynx struggled as an expansion side, but it wasn’t because of Smith. Every year from 2000 to 2003, Smith was a WNBA All-Star. In 2000 and 2001, Smith led the WNBA in points, including a 46-point game against the Los Angeles Sparks on July 8, 2021. At the time it was the single game point-scoring record for the WNBA, a record that lasted five years until fellow basketball star Diana Taurasi surpassed it.

With a new coach at the helm for the 2003 and 2004 seasons, Smith played her first postseason basketball with the Lynx, not making it out of the conference semi-finals. However, in 2005 the Ohioan got her chance to compete at the highest level of the league. That’s when Smith joined NBA great Bill Laimbeer and the Detroit Shock. Joining the Shock halfway through an All-Star season, Detroit made it to the conference semi-finals and lost. That loss put Smith and the Shock on a road to a WNBA championship.

In 2006, Smith averaged 11.7 points and 3.3 assists in her sixth All-Star season in eight years. It helped Detroit earn a second-seed spot in the Eastern Conference behind the Connecticut Sun. After sweeping the Indiana Fever behind 27 points in two games for Smith, the Shock got past the No. 1 seed and made it to the WNBA Finals. The first time in the guard’s WNBA career.

The increase in pressure that comes with playing for a championship pushed Smith to another level. Logan, Ohio’s own was back in collegiate scoring form, averaging 17.0 points and 3.4 assists per game. However, the Shock still found themselves down two games to one against the Sacramento Monarchs with one more loss putting Smith back in a runners-up spot, like she found herself in back as a Buckeye freshman in 1993. This time, Smith wasn’t letting it happen.

Game four, in Sacramento, California, Smith scored 22 points on top of four rebounds and three assists in a 20-point win for the Shock. Pushing to a final game, the Shock headed back to the Midwest for game five where Smith kept that intensity going. In the deciding game, Detroit was down eight points at halftime to the Monarchs and it was Smith’s heroics that changed the tide. With two key shots in the fourth quarter, Smith’s 17 points and six assists in the 80-75 victory gave Smith her first WNBA title.

Detroit made it to the finals again in 2007, losing to Taurasi and the Phoenix Mercury, but came back even stronger in 2008. Despite not making the 2008 All-Star team, even though she had her best scoring of her time in Detroit and averaged the most assists in her career, Smith exploded in the finals against those same Sacramento Monarchs.

This time though, Detroit made quick work of Sacramento. The Shock swept Sacramento with Smith averaging 21.7 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists in three games. It earned Smith another new award: WNBA Finals MVP. 

For the remaining four years of Smith’s WNBA career, she spent it splitting time between the Washington Mystics, reuniting with Alger with the Seattle Storm before one final season with Laimbeer in 2013 with the New York Liberty.

When Smith retired following the 2013 season, the guard was the No. 1 scorer in professional basketball history, scoring 7,885 points (6,452 in the WNBA), a record that’s since been surpassed but Smith’s regarded as one of the best in the history of the WNBA. Every five years, starting at the leagues’ 10-year anniversary in 2006, the league and fans voted on the top 10, 15, 20 and 25 best players of all time. Each of the five lists of stars includes Smith.

In 2018, both the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inducted Smith for her outstanding play collegiately, professionally and internationally.

Career Honors 

International Career

When Smith began excelling at basketball, there weren’t opportunities for girls to play overseas with traveling club teams like there is in today’s amateur sports world. The first time Smith ever left the United States was of course for basketball, representing Team USA’s youth side in South Korea in 1993 at the Junior World Championships.

Since then, Smith’s been much more of a world traveler. The guard’s played professionally in both Poland and Turkey, but her time outside of the United States is best remembered when Smith wore the red, white and blue. Smith represented Ohio and the entire nation numerous times over her career, winning gold in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics, plus two golds and a bronze in three World Cup appearances.

Coaching

Something that Smith said frequently during her time as a player is that there was no way she wanted to coach basketball. Just like Smith’s thought that she couldn’t play basketball professionally for a living, the idea that she would never coach was short-lived.

In 2013, Smith joined the New York Liberty, under former Detroit head coach Laimbeer, with the idea that following her final season she’d join the Liberty as an assistant coach. For the next six years, Smith moved up the coaching ladder in New York. After two seasons as an assistant, Smith was promoted to assistant head coach. Then, after the 2017 season, Laimbeer decided to move to Las Vegas and help start the relocated Detroit Shock team and their new identity as the Las Vegas Aces. With the new coaching vacancy, Smith became a head coach for the first time.

The guard turned coach led the Liberty for two seasons, winning 17 and losing 51 over the 2018 and 2019 seasons. It was at a time when the entire team was in flux. The ownership group was in the process of selling the Liberty and moving them out of Madison Square Garden at the same time. It was a moment of uncertainty across the organization, with the Liberty ultimately letting Smith go following the 2019 campaign.

Smith’s coaching didn’t stop there. The former Minnesota Lynx star headed back to Minnesota for the first time since leaving in 2005. This time, as an associate head coach for Cheryl Reeves, Laimbeer’s former assistant and one of Smith’s coaches in Detroit. She left the WNBA to return to Ohio State as an assistant coach on Kevin McGuff's staff in 2024.

Smith still calls Central Ohio home. The Logan, Ohio native isn’t only coaching but is an ambassador for the game. Inducted into Ohio State Hall of Fame, the aspiring dentist comes to watch the Buckeyes women’s basketball team throughout the season. In 2018, when Columbus hosted the Women’s Final Four, Smith was part of the celebration, representing the university at the annual sports event.