Time for Joshua Smith to grow up

UCLA's freshman center Joshua Smith has all the tools for a terrific future in the sport of basketball.

Anyone that watched him manhandle a good Kansas front line back in November will agree. Smith is big enough and strong enough to establish and hold position against just about anyone at this level. He has good hands, a nice touch around the rim, and solid footwork for a 6'11" 18 year old.

Smith's issue isn't his god-given tools, its maturity.

For starters, he still needs to cut a lot of weight. In this day and age its saying something when you make a basketball uniform look like spandex. He's reasonably quick and athletic as it is, so dropping 40-50 pounds -- which is very possible to do -- should make him just that much more explosive.


More concerning, however, were his actions after a tough loss to USC.

The first thing that we heard about was Smith complaining about USC's premature celebration:

"When the other team starts to celebrate with 40 seconds left, that's just kind of a slap in the face," UCLA center Joshua Smith said. "Don't get me wrong. They won fair and square. Nothing against them. But with 40 seconds left, you just let the clock run out, shake our hands and go celebrate in the locker room."

Fair enough.

So USC showed you up. You have a right to be pissed. I'd probably be pissed. Keep to yourself and within the team and use it as motivation. Keep it in mind when USC comes back to Pauley Pavilion later in the season. Don't go spouting off to reporters about it, because now that quote is probably hanging up in the USC locker room.

That wasn't the only complaint Smith had after the game. He complained about the refs as well, saying:

"the refs were terrible. The one where I fell and [USC's Nikola] Vucevic fell on me, the refs said, 'Well, I had to call it because you fell.' They're giving me [ridiculous] answers. They're telling me this, this and this. I mean, I'm a guy who will own up to it when I foul."

As you can probably imagine, Ben Howland was none to pleased to open the paper and see those quotes, saying Smith used "totally poor judgement":

"He has to be a big boy," Howland said Tuesday. "You cannot say something like that and not expect it to come back."
...
"He was like, 'I don't think I fouled him,' " Howland said. "Yeah, your arm is coming right down and you're hitting him. So he was still in denial after seeing it and seeing that he's fouling.

"So he's got to grow up and learn that that's uncalled for and inappropriate."

I wish I could say that was it, but there is still more. After the game, a fan said something to Smith was "personal" and about his family, and Smith reacted. By flipping the fan the bird. He said on Tuesday that he regrets it and that he is a "bigger person than that."

Well, Joshua, its time to show it.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that has noticed poor body language out of the big man. There are times where it looks like he is sulking on the bench -- be it a result of fouls, playing time, or touches -- and it doesn't seem like he is always playing hard. Its frustrating to watch.

And I understand that he's only 18. College is a time when you grow up, when you go from being a kid that lives with his/her parents to the young adult that is getting ready to enter the real world. Maturation doesn't magically occur because you've finished a semester of college. Its a process, and for some it takes longer than others.

But for Smith, it needs to start happening soon.

He's a talented kid. He has a chance to make a lot of money playing this game. But he has to get to a point where he understands that it is unacceptable to flip off fans and displace blame on the refs by spouting off to the media.