'We were treated like kings of Cork city...' Ray Smith on great days in Irish basketball
Ray Smith drives to the hoop.
Ray Smith is considered by many as the best basketballer that played in Ireland.
The American ace starred for Neptune, then Bugerland, alongside the skillful Terry Strickland and they were probably the greatest on-court partnership that Irish basketball has ever seen. Smith was the most awesome athlete operating in Irish domestic sport at the time. He stood at 6' 7" and was pure muscle, which made him virtually unguardable in the 1980s.
The three seasons he shone for Neptune, they won the league. He loved it in Cork but then Spain came calling and he went on to have a very successful career at a higher level.
He would go on to be the top scorer and MVP of the Spanish League, the best outside the NBA. He even turned down playing for Real Madrid to remain in Malaga, and went head-to-head with Arvydas Sabonis, probably the best non-American player in the world at the time.
Smith had briefly lined out in college with NBA legend Charles Barkley and was the top-scorer and rebounder in all of college basketball, before he ended up in Cork, going up against the likes of Jasper McElroy and Kelvin Troy, two of the other most devastating Americans in the game.
“I grew up in Greer, South Carolina. Greer was a tough town, but things started changing when I was about 14 years old as up to then football was my first choice sport.
“By the time I was 17, I was the Player of the Year in the state of South Carolina. My high school coach gave me the keys to the gym and I’d just live there it was then big college teams wanted to recruit me, but in the end, I opted for Auburn in Alabama.
"NBA legend Charles Barkley was the other freshman on our team. But my grades weren’t good and I was very young, a year behind everyone else so after a few months I left to play for a junior college in Pensacola, Florida.
“I went to Pensacola for a year and then transferred to Armstrong State, a Division 2 school in Georgia.
"I was playing summer league in Greenville, in a place like the Parochial Hall, with maybe 2,000 people in the stands, when this guy called Ken Black came up after this game. He told me he was about to coach a team in Ireland and asked me if I wanted to join him.
"He told me it was in Europe, so a few days later I go over with Terry Strickland, who Ken had coached in college. I saw Jackie Solan at the airport and we get into his car and he starts driving on the wrong side of these little roads!
"Those first few months were very difficult for me. I used to write letters to my mother every day and cry in our house every day with homesickness. However, I’d put on my game face when it came to games because basketball was what had brought me over here.
"I’d end up loving Cork as the Neptune guys were the best team-mates I would ever have played with in my entire career.
"We would go out together after every game and we would hardly have to pay for a drink, as all of us Americans were treated like Gods."
American player Mike Smith, played in 1985-’86 with Yoplait Marian, before he was signed by Malaga. Towards the end of the 1987 season, their second American got himself suspended for four games and they needed a replacement. The call went out to Ray Smith. So just a few days after scoring 47 points for Burgerland in the Neptune International Tournament final, he was doing the same for Malaga against Valencia in front of 6,500.
His time in Ireland prepared him to compete at an elite level.
"In Ireland, the Americans had be so good. If you had a bad game they would ship you home and have a replacement in before you know it, so you had to be at your best every night.
"I played basketball right up until I was 41, playing in the Euro League with different teams in Spain.
"We were treated like kings of Cork city."
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