Gavin Smith

Gavin Smith (December 10, 1954 – May 2012) was an American college basketball star, actor, stuntman, and film studio executive, formerly a regional manager of distribution for 20th Century Fox.

He was a star player on the Van Nuys High School boys' basketball team in the early 1970s.

He was named a second-team All-American by Parade magazine as a senior in 1973.

Smith went on to attend the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and play there for coach John Wooden.

Prior to his eighteen years in that position he played basketball at UCLA, where he was part of the 1975 team that won that year's NCAA championship, the last for coach John Wooden.

He later played at Hawaii, where he set the school's still-standing single-season scoring record of 23.4 points per game.

In his sophomore year he was a forward on the 1975 team which won that year's NCAA championship, Wooden's tenth and last.

Smith did not play in UCLA's 92–85 title-game defeat of Kentucky.

The next season was his best at UCLA, as he appeared in all but two games, averaging 5.9 points per game (ppg).

In the 1976 Final Four, he appeared twice.

Against Indiana, the eventual champs, he scored six points, adding eight points and four rebounds in the third-place game victory over Rutgers.

After the season, he transferred to University of Hawaii for a season and finished his playing career with the Rainbow Warriors basketball team.

Smith set the school's single-season scoring record of 23.4 ppg, a mark that stands despite the subsequent introduction of the three-point field goal.

While at Hawaii, Smith became recognizable for complementing his then long hair with a bandana, and bringing his dog to practice.

Former Rainbow Warriors coach Riley Wallace, who coached against Smith at the time, remembered him as a formidable opponent.

"He frustrated me as a coach," Wallace recalls.

"He could score from anywhere on the floor ... [he was] probably one of the best shooters in the history of Hawaii."

Smith eventually began a career in the film industry, at first in front of the camera.

He made his acting debut playing a bodyguard in a televised adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Glitz.

The following year, he had a small role in Greg Mottola's debut short, "Swingin' in the Painter's Room."

He had a small role as a bartender in Cobb, the 1994 biopic of baseball player Ty Cobb.

After playing a bartender in the 1994 film Cobb, a biopic of baseball player Ty Cobb, Smith went into the business side of the industry as an executive.

He took a job in 20th Century Fox's distribution department, making sure that films got to the theaters they were scheduled to appear in.

While he was not involved with the creative aspect of the business, he has been credited with helping films such as Titanic, Avatar and the rereleases of the original Star Wars trilogy succeed.

On the night of May 1, 2012, Smith left a friend's house in Oak Park, where he had been staying due to reported marital difficulties.

It does not appear he planned to be away long.

When he failed to pick up one of his sons for school the next morning, his family reported him missing.

Two years later, with Smith still missing and no evidence of his presence anywhere past the night of his disappearance, he was retroactively declared legally dead.

By 2012 he was Fox's regional branch manager for theaters in the Dallas and Oklahoma City areas, working out of the company's Calabasas offices.

According to friends, he had talked about returning to acting when he retired from Fox as he expected to within a few years.

He had settled in the West Hills area of the Valley with his wife, Lisa, and their three sons.

One of his sons, Evan, played basketball for University of Southern California, and was later featured on the reality show Temptation Island.

In the meantime, his success was offset by marital, financial and substance abuse difficulties.

Several months later, on October 26, 2014, hikers chanced upon Smith's remains near Palmdale in the Antelope Valley.

In January 2015, John Lenzie Creech, a convicted drug dealer who had begun an eight-year prison sentence on that charge shortly after Smith disappeared, was arrested again and charged with the murder.

His wife, Chandrika Cade-Creech, had reportedly been romantically involved with Smith.

Creech's attorney said the death was a "tragic accident".

According to testimony before the grand jury that indicted Creech on the murder charge, he allegedly beat Smith to death after catching him and his wife together.

Creech was convicted of voluntary manslaughter on July 3, 2017.

Smith was from the San Fernando Valley.