Spellman mourns JV hoop coach

JIMMY CASSIDY normally arrived with Kareem Smith more than an hour before a scheduled basketball game, just to make sure they reached the gym before the players. But when Cassidy — an assistant to Smith on the Spellman JV boys basketball team — didn’t see Smith at the Salesian HS gym for a second-round playoff game on Monday against Nazareth, he knew something was wrong.

Smith, who had been suffering from Lupus the past five years and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks earlier in the season, never showed, forcing Cassidy, who played for Smith as a student, to coach the game.

Nearly an hour after the Pilots were eliminated from the playoffs, Cassidy received a phone call from Collin Smith (no relation), a school dean and the freshman basketball coach at Spellman. Smith relayed the news that Kareem Smith had been found dead in his Bronx apartment, having died from apparent complications of Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease.

Smith was in his late 20s, according to Cassidy.

“It hurts,” said Abraham Seabrook, a sophomore guard on the JV team. “I just spoke to him a couple days ago. And then out of nowhere he’s gone. It’s just not something you expect to happen.”

It was under those extreme conditions that Spellman hosted a varsity boys basketball game against Scanlan on Tuesday. Smith, who also coached on the AAU circuit, served as a varsity assistant and likely would have been on the bench.

“In all my years of coaching, it’s the toughest game I ever coached,” varsity coach Fred Opper said following Spellman’s 68-61 loss.

A stream of varsity players walked into Opper’s office as he spoke, their heads down as they embraced.

The Spellman freshman team wore black patches on their uniforms just hours after learning of Smith’s death on Monday.

Dom Arena, who played for Smith on his New York Minutemen AAU team the past three years, was in tears discussing his former coach.

“It was just devastating,” said Arena, who finished with 12 points on Tuesday. “I don’t even know how I was going to play today.”

Opper said Smith wasn’t married and didn’t have children but is survived by his mother and brother.