LAS VEGAS — Tommy Smith, in his quest to remain employed as a professional basketball player, joined dozens of other free agents in a single-file line this month at Desert Oasis High School, a boxy structure set amid rocks, cactus and molten heat about 10 miles south of this city’s shimmering strip of casinos.
Smith, 34, had made the four-hour drive from his home in Phoenix for the start of a four-day spectacle run by the Korean Basketball League, and he soon spotted a familiar face: Smush Parker, the former Los Angeles Lakers guard whose own odyssey had landed him here, also at age 34, in hopes of landing another job.