Nov. 2, 2015
NEW ORLEANS – Alone in the car together back in August of 2013 just after their worlds had been completely shattered, Jason Smith tried giving close friend and teammate Ryan Anderson the one thing he had wanted most when he endured an unspeakable tragedy himself two years earlier.
Silence.
Not long after Anderson’s long-time girlfriend, Gia Allemand, was pronounced dead from suicide-related trauma on Aug. 14, 2013, Smith was there for support and to comfort his close friend on the New Orleans Pelicans at the time. Smith, who had suffered through the shocking death of his 67-year-old father two years earlier following a car wreck, drove Anderson home from New Orleans’ University Hospital that day.