The Wild Story of 76ers Rookie Zhaire Smith's Almost-Deadly Allergic Reaction
Bedridden, in constant pain, and unable to eat or drink, Zhaire could only sleep for 30 minutes at a time, and only with the help of morphine. He spent his nights watching 76ers game films and doing some informal scouting for coach Brett Brown, who would check in with him on FaceTime. Then-teammate Markelle Fultz often texted, but Zhaire rarely had the energy to respond. He was too weak to do physical activities, save for thumb wars with Aundre, who slept by his side at the hospital each night. Zhaire’s days were spent meditating with his mom, Andrea. The only other way to help Zhaire relax was the repetitive motion of twisting his hair. “They were calming me down, but I was throwing temper tantrums,” Zhaire says. “Everyday, I was like, ‘Am I getting out? Can I drink? Can I eat? I was so thirsty.”’
It was a perverse game of patience for the guy who’s the sixth-youngest player on an NBA roster. “I had to remind him who he was,” Andrea says. “Let him know we’re going to get through this to do well and prosper. That’s the meaning of his name, and I kept telling him that.”
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Zhaire returned home with a feeding tube, three other tubes, a 24-hour nurse, and the steady, constant presence of Andrea and Aundre, who lived a few minutes away. Down to 160 pounds, he was too weak to do pushups or lift weights. He’d walk up and down the hallway with Aundre, and try to take his mind off things with “all them old-school movies,” he says, like Boyz n the Hood and Friday.
A tangible sign of progress came on Thanksgiving day: Andrea made him mashed potatoes, the first semi-solid food he had eaten in months. “I was putting a lot of love in that meal,” Andrea says. Zhaire could also drink chicken broth, and was practically inhaling protein shakes to put on weight. He did curls with bands in lieu of actual weights, but wasn’t allowed to run.
A few days before Christmas, Zhaire got the green light to shoot around again. But he was also underweight, and still had tubes protruding from his stomach. He didn’t want his Sixers teammates—who didn’t know the full extent of his condition—to see him, so he and Aundre headed to the team’s training facility at 4:30 a.m., when he was sure no one else would be around.
The first session, he says, wasn’t easy. “I was weak and chucking up threes,” Zhaire recalls. “Maybe one out of every 30 shots would go in.” As Zhaire shot around, his stomach tube started leaking. He and Aundre taped up the tube, wiped the fluids off the floor, and kept going. The attire for the workout was his bathrobe—partially because it was one of the few articles of clothing that comfortably fit over the tubes, and partially because Zhaire was used to being “big and cut,” and didn’t like the way he looked in a normal shirt.
The 4:30 a.m. shootaround became his routine. He’d practice in a bathrobe or hoodie while Aundre rebounded. One morning, Zhaire went to get dressed in the locker room, and Aundre sat waiting for him on the court. “Five minutes pass, 10 minutes pass, so I go in there and call his name,” Aundre remembers. “He’s laying on the training room table, fast asleep. I told him we should head home so he could get some rest. But he got up and started training again.”
The tubes were taken out one at a time over the course of a month or so. The feeding tube was first, and its removal, Zhaire says, was one of the most painful moments of his life—worse than the allergic reaction itself. By the NBA All-Star break in late February, Zhaire had regained much of the weight he’d lost. The Delaware Blue Coats of the G League offered him reentry to competitive basketball, and he got 15 minutes of playing time on March 1, finishing 1-for-4 from the floor. He remembers badly bricking his first jumper. “I tried to stay calm, but the game had to come back to me. I guess I was too excited,” he says.
