2023-07-30 07:25:09
Dorian Finney-Smith stopped being a Mavericks player on February 6. Dallas sent him to Brooklyn in the trade that made Kyrie Irving a partner of Luka Doncic, along with Spencer Dinwiddie and several rounds. But Finney-Smith’s relationship with the Mavs didn’t end there. After six and a half years in Texas, Dorian has been a highly respected figure within the franchise and the Mavericks have repaid years of effort and sacrifice this week with an unexpected gift.
Last Wednesday, the Virginia State Parole Board voted 3-0 in favor of grant parole to Dorian’s father, Elbert Smith Jr, who has been in jail for the past 28 years. In 2023, the board has only approved 23 of the 1,255 cases analyzed, so the chances of receiving a negative result were very high, but the support of the franchise has been key in this situation. Mark Cuban, general manager Nico Harrison, CEO Cynt Marshall and other members of the Mavs front office were part of the process, which began three years ago and has finally come to a happy ending for the family.
In 2021, Finney-Smith decided to explain her father’s situation to Jason Lutin, chief of staff at Mark Cuban Companies, who studied law at the University of Florida (where Dorian also studied). Together they went to Jerry Kilgore, former attorney general for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and started turning the wheel. Kilgore’s first visit to the prison was two years ago: “Elbert is very smart, he asked the right questions. He just wanted to speed up the process and meet with his family.” The hearing was last January, when Finney-Smith was still a Dallas player. Coach Jason Kidd gave the player permission to travel to Virginia from Dallas while the rest of the team flew to Phoenix. Lutin and Nico Harrison traveled with Dorian.
Both were part of the audience, where they might, in addition to introducing themselves, explain who Dorian Finney-Smith is. Rick Carlisle, former Dallas coach and now Pacers coach, also took part virtually and presented testimonials in the form of letters from other Dallas members, including Cuban. The plan was to spell out how the Finney-Smith family intended to provide for Elbert, including a job at the Finney Family First Foundation. “We mightn’t say much regarding Elbert because we didn’t know him, but what a wonderful person Dorian is,” Harrison said. Although it was Dorian’s statements that convinced the board.
Finney-Smith described her life without her father, a person she has seen through glass for 28 of her 30 years and only been able to communicate with by phone. How her mother had to moonlight to raise six children and how one of them died in a shooting at a high school, in front of Dorian. Like Finney-Smtih, he was a father at 16 following becoming a basketball star before college, but he might never hold his own in the NCAA and went undrafted. “People like me don’t make it to the NBA, people like me usually end up like my father, in jail, or like my brother, dead,” Dorian argued before the board.
Just ten days following the hearing, the Mavs traded DFS to Brooklyn, but even then, Dallas, and especially Lutin, continued to help the player. “He told me we would be family forever and he backed it up. He might have put me aside following the transfer, but he didn’t.” This Wednesday, in the early followingnoon, Lutin sent a message to Finney-Smith: “Can you talk?” Within ten seconds of the call, Dorian was crying. He called his wife and his three children, his sister, who just gave birth to her firstborn, and his mother, Doris Smith, to tell the big news: Elbert will be released from jail. .
It will be a long process and for now he will live with Desiree, Dorian’s sister. But finally what started with the player opening up and telling a personal experience to an assistant will end. Jamahl Mosley, now the Magic’s coach and then an assistant in Dallas, was the first to hear Dorian’s story and who recommended he talk to Mark Cuban. It was the owner who made an appointment with Lutin and who promised that they would help him. Three years later, and already on another team, the Mavs have kept their word.
Sports journalist covering the NBA from Toronto. Leaving from Barcelona, he has lived in Boston, Sydney and Bogotá before staying in Canada to bring the best basketball league on the planet. All NBA, a bit of basketball, because he grew up with Tracy McGrady and Pau Gasol, but also with Sarunas Jasikevicius and Arvydas Macijauskas. He studied journalism in Barcelona, where he worked in various media and radio stations, and currently also collaborates with Gigantes del Basket and NBA Spain. He was in the NBA finals in which Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka and Sergio Scariolo got their first ring. If you don’t see him here, he’s probably on Twitter. …
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