Throwback Mixtapes: Kenyatta Smith

In a running series for The Back Page, contributing writer Patrick Xu breaks down the high school mixtapes of members of the Harvard men’s basketball team. In this post, Patrick looks at junior big man Kenyatta Smith.

Remember last year when Harvard basketball had the awkward platoon of big men with no one clearly leading the pack? Jonah Travis began the year off as a starter, while Steve Mondou-Missi also played big minutes and had a couple of huge plays (awkward reverse, anyone?)

And then, out of nowhere came Kenyatta Smith, who was playing less than 10 minutes a game up until he started against Penn at home and proceeded to have an out-of-body Dwight-Howard-like performance. Smith dominated from start to finish, effectively destroying Penn’s interior game on both ends with 20 points, 10 blocks, and nine rebounds.

Just think about that. A bench player randomly starts a game and finishes one rebound off of a triple double. That would be like Juwan Howard coming off the bench for the Heat and, I don’t know, notching more than ten minutes in a single game (is he officially player-coach yet?)

Anyhow, a look into Yatta’s past is less surprising than it is oddly familiar. He still seems the same size, although he’s probably put on a little muscle since entering Harvard. There’s still no semblance of an outside game, which is completely unnecessary for the interior role he plays, and he still has that rebounding prowess that we saw all of last season. Plus, he still has that faint little mustache that he’s always sporting.

In his first highlight clip, he’s taller than everyone else on the court by a complete head. Consequently, Yatta pulls down multiple vicious rebounds like it’s a game of keepaway from little children. We can also see a somewhat awkward drive to the basket at 1:06 that was called a travel—probably the wrong call—the sort of game we don’t really see from Kenyatta anymore. It seems like most of his shots are back to the basket hook shots, which he makes with remarkable accuracy.

The funniest part of the video has to be at 2:14, where Yatta saves a weird shot by one of his guards by flipping the ball over his head. As he runs back, he has this disappointed, irritated look on his face as he throws his hands up in both disbelief and anger. I can’t tell if he’s pissed that his guard took a terrible off balance shot, or because he should’ve flipped the ball in a slightly more gracious manner.

The coolest part of the video is seeing Yatta operating from the high post, as he constantly floats around this area while his guards swing the ball around the three-point line. As mentioned, we see him mostly down low with his patented hook shot, but it would have been interesting to see some of his moves from up there and leads me to wonder if he has a jump shot that might be displayed this season.

In this second interview/highlight reel—the video has 10 views and I think I’ve accounted for more than 50 percent of them—we learn that Yatta was averaging 20 points and 15 rebounds a game in high school and that he started playing basketball in the seventh grade. Oh, and that he used to play soccer… oh, the money I’d pay to watch that. Finally, we get this quick scene at 1:05 where Yatta completely backs down a player on his team who’s a hell of a lot shorter than he is. Some things don’t change.