$1 million! Two basketball players with SC ties battle for top prize on ESPN tonight
Two hoopers from South Carolina will soon play for a share of $1 million.
Terrell Smith, a basketball trainer in Fort Mill and a former wing for local semi-pro team PrimeTime Players, is playing in The Basketball Tournament’s championship game at 9 p.m. Tuesday. The contest will air on ESPN, and the winning team will split a $1 million prize.
The Fort Mill resident is a 6-foot-4 small forward and plays for Team 23, which will face off against Boeheim’s Army (which, yes, features a handful of former Syracuse basketball stars) in UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio. Smith has averaged 2.6 points and 1.6 rebounds in his team’s five wins in this year’s tournament, which started July 26.
Columbia’s Eric Washington also has played a role Team 23’s success. The guard had 16 points on 7-of-7 shooting in the quarterfinal win over Sideline Cancer on Saturday. For the tournament, he is averaging 5.6 points and 2.4 assists.
The Basketball Tournament, better known as TBT, is advertised as a “reimagined” version of professional basketball — a fully open, single-elimination, winner-take-all annual tournament that began in 2014. It has garnered a lot of publicity since its inception, in part because of a rule the tournament adopted called the “Elam Ending” that makes it so every contest ends on a game-winner.
Smith got involved in the league in 2016 and played the previous four years with PrimeTime Players, per his bio on the TBT website.
According to Smith’s training website — Smith Elite Training — the small forward grew up in South Carolina and graduated from Lexington’s White Knoll High School in 2003. After that, he moved on to Spartanburg Methodist Junior College and then to Limestone College in Gaffney, where he played basketball until he graduated in 2007. He then spent a year in the Reading Rockets Professional League in England before playing for the PrimeTime Players in Rock Hill and, now, the Rowan County Bulls.
He’s on Team 23, a squad based in West Virginia, for this year’s TBT.
When he’s not playing basketball himself, he’s the lead instructor at Smith Elite Training — an organization that runs boys and girls AAU teams as well as operates group/individual training camps for aspiring hoopers in York County and surrounding areas. He runs his camps out of the Baxter Close Upper Palmetto YMCA in Fort Mill, per his website.
Other players repping York County made waves in this year’s TBT. The PrimeTime Players, Smith’s former team, also participated in the tournament, and Players’ guard Chris Moore competed in the TBT 3-point contest.
Washington was an all-state player at Keenan High School in Richland County and was part of back-to-back state championship teams in 2010-11 before signing with Presbyterian College. He transferred to Miami (Ohio), where he was a team captain and still holds two of the top 10 single-game assist totals in school history.
After college, Washington played for the Toronto Raptors’ G-League team in 2017 before being released. He has played overseas the last several years and averaged 19.7 points a game for Oroszlanyi Sporteglet E Lions in Hungary this season.
— The State’s Lou Bezjak contributed
Watch The Basketball Tournament Final
Who? Team 23 vs. Boeheims Army
When? Tuesday at 9 p.m.
How to watch? ESPN
This story was originally published August 3, 2021 at 9:07 AM.
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