SMW Q&A with Kenny Smith

Sports Media Watch caught up with TNT NBA analyst and two-time NBA champion Kenny Smith in Atlanta last week.

Among the topics of conversation, Smith’s future at TNT, the first time he spoke to Charles Barkley, and his ventures outside of the world of sports. Also touched on was Allen Iverson‘s return to the 76ers, and the lasting impact of the 2004 brawl between the Pacers and Pistons. Smith’s take on the Tim Donaghy scandal can be read here.

SMW: I know you’ve expressed a lot of interest in being a general manager, you had the situation with the Knicks two years ago. How much longer do you see yourself here at TNT?

Kenny: It’s difficult to say. Sometimes, you go, ‘I’ll be here 30 more days.’ Because every day, someone hears you. And they hear your opinions. I’ve been on those kind of interviews, and the questions they ask you are the same things you say on television every night. So, every night, you don’t have to figure out what do I think about, if that’s what you want to do. So the opportunity could come in 30 days or it could come in 3 years. I always say, if it’s basketball, it’s me. I think that I would be able to construct a pretty good team, because of the knowledge of the game. So any kind of capacity, that’s why those options are always open. I’m a basketball person 101.

After that, everything else in terms of the career, is secondary. So this is part of basketball, that’s why I’m here. Two things I think, maybe to add – and this will help, this helps coaching, this helps general managers – in 30 seconds, I can give you a real good synopsis of what’s going on. That’s what you need as a coach or general manager, ‘hey this is going on, boom, boom, boom, boom.’ And its also made my phone book pretty impressive. I can get on the phone, and players respond to my calls, agents respond to my calls, because of the relationships that I’ve built over the last 10, 12, 14 years.

SMW: So being an analyst has really helped you in your future endeavors?

Kenny: Oh yeah. Winning championships and being a point guard is big. Being a point guard, probably first. Because a point guard has to know what everyone’s doing at all times, and is truly an extension of the coach. The second part of it, winning a championship, being on championship teams you get an idea of what it takes to pay attention to the details. And thirdly, the analyst has really taken it to the next level. Because you know how to communicate what you’re thinking. A lot of great players, you ask them why they’re great, there’s a, ‘How do you rebound?’ ‘Oh, I just go get a rebound.’ ‘How do you score?’ ‘Oh, I just take the guy.’ Being able to articulate it – how it’s done, not just ‘I rebound’ or ‘I score’ – is difficult for a lot of guys. And being an analyst has made it easy.

SMW: Did you ever think you’d be [at TNT] as long as you’ve been?

Kenny: Not really. No. I didn’t really know until maybe about the third year in. I was like, ‘this is it, this is like a career here.’ It was funny, because Craig Sager called me one day, and he said – it was about my second or third year here – and he said, ‘Kenny, I hear lots of people asking you to join their thing as assistant coach or coach. Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘Craig why would you say that?’ He’s like, ‘you don’t realize how good you are. You guys could put a show together, you could win an Emmy.’ Now, we’ve won Emmys. … When I first got here, Michael Jackson – obviously, not the singer – he used to be at Georgetown and played at Georgetown, he was here – he and Mike Pearl brought me in and said, ‘Kenny, you’re really good at this’. But I thought they say that to all of their talent. It took someone else in the talent department to come to me and go, ‘Kenny, listen, this could be a career in this life, there’s great money, there’s great everything, in this as a career.’ And I never thought of it as a career. I thought of it as, I’m a guy coming on TV. I never thought about it as a career, until he said that, in about my third year here.

SMW: You’ve done a couple of things outside of sports too. There was a sitcom you were developing with Jamie Foxx.

Kenny: I still do a lot of things in entertainment, either short term or now trying to be long-term. You learn a lot about television and music and film here. You learn about – I’ve learned from cutting, to actually putting together – you learn how it is, how everything comes together. And the associations that you have kind of move in different directions and move in different areas. Guys who were here before, they’re at other networks, and you hear, talk, they’re good friends of yours, you just learn. … So that’s what I’ve created, an entertainment group. We branded sneaker companies from the Al Harrington shoe, Protégé, we were the initial branders of the brand, with K-Mart. I’ve done stuff with Volkswagen. You learn how to do things, just by talking to people who you work with. So in the last three years, that’s when I created the entertainment group, and that’s really taken off.

SMW: I have a couple of questions about Charles. Obviously, he’s not here today. What would a typical night be like if Charles were here?

Kenny: It’s a lot quieter in here tonight. You hear him before you see him, for sure. The energy’s different back here [in the green room]. The same energy we have out there [on the set] continues in here when he’s here. It never stops. Right now, I don’t have anybody to bounce it off, but it never stops. All the jokes, all the laughter, the energy and the high excitement, it never stops. It’s a four-hour ride. You get off the show, you’re exhausted, because it never stops. Two in the morning is like two in the afternoon to him. There’s few guys I’ve been around that are like that, he’s one of them. That, one in the morning is one in the afternoon. There is no time zone with him, no time clock.

SMW: You guys played in the NBA at the same time. Not on the same teams, of course. Did you ever think that Charles would be as big as he is today when you were playing?

Kenny: I didn’t really know him, really. It’s funny, because we’ve been here together 10 years. But I didn’t know him until he got here. I had one encounter with him which I knew he was a different guy. Because you hear all of the stories of what goes on off the court … but you don’t know if he’s a good guy. I learned – it was my next-to-last year in the league, and Houston decided for 10 games, they were going to take me out of the starting line-up. I had never come of the bench in my whole life. So, they take me out of the starting line-up, and then I went from starting to not playing. So I didn’t say anything. I said, ‘hey that’s the coach’s decision’. That was my only quote for 10 games, ‘it’s the coach’s decision.’

So we’re playing Phoenix, and Charles comes over to me on the lay-up line. ‘Hey Kenny!’ Nobody talks on the lay-up line. ‘Kenny, come here.’ I had never spoken to Charles personally. Just on the court, like ‘here he is, pick, move.’ He goes, ‘I like the way you handled that, man. That’s class.’

SMW: And that’s the first time you ever talked?

Kenny: First time we had ever talked. First thing he said to me. I don’t even know if he remembers that. But he said that, ‘that’s class, that’s the way you handle it. You’ll be back in the line-up.’ ‘I appreciate that, Chuck,’ and that was it, I go back on the lay-up line. And then we start working together. So that was the first thing and only thing when we had really had a serious conversation – on the free throw line we’d say silly things like ‘what are you doing here, little fella’ and stuff like that. Not that we’d go out or anything like that. That was it. That’s when I knew, I said, this guy’s sincere, no matter what people say and how they talk about him in certain areas, he’s a sincere guy.

SMW: How much of the success of the show do you think is due to the chemistry you, EJ and Charles have together?

Kenny: I think that success wouldn’t be here without the production team, which allows us to be us. A lot of people on TV, when you’re on TV, they say, ‘look at camera 3, you have 15 seconds to talk and you have’ – they knew, and they had hindsight to say, let these guys go. We can reel them in, but let’s not give them any line. And I think that – there’s no other show that I’ve ever been on that does that. None. So the production team of Tim Kiely, like I said, Michael Jackson early, Dr. [Harvey] Shiller and Michael Pearl early, and now continuing on to [David] Levy and the rest of these guys here, to have the hindsight to see it and create it – people don’t understand, I see shows that emulate sections of what we do, and I’m like, you can’t emulate it because we didn’t even know we were going to do it.

We don’t know when we walk out here, like Ernie’s not talking to me right now. He doesn’t know what I’m going to say. Has no idea. He doesn’t know what I’m looking at in the game, Charles doesn’t know, and just says it – I say it when it comes. And they give us a great deal of trust on that. That’s great deal of trust when people feel their job is on the line if someone says something wrong. That creates the chemistry, that creates something that’s unmatched. And that creates the fun and the mayhem and everything else that happens.

SMW: Do you think that you could replicate the same kind of success you’ve had here with different guys? If Charles were to go …

Kenny: No. No. Because everyone’s part of it. Everyone’s idea is implemented. When I go upstairs later on, I usually go at halftime of the second game, and I sit and talk to the guys and joke around – they say something up there, I bring it down here. If anyone in here says anything and Charles is here, we take it and we bring it. So it’s not just me, it’s not just Ernie, it’s not just Chuck. It’s a combination of everybody that’s in the building, and you can’t recreate the building. … So you can’t replicate it, you can’t bring it in. You can’t. Everyone’s involved here.

SMW: Let me ask you a couple of NBA questions. Obviously, Allen Iverson’s situation is the biggest situation in the NBA right now. You were pretty outspoken about it on NBA TV last week. So what do you think about A.I. coming back, and how successful he’ll be with the Sixers?

Kenny: One, he’s going to be excited. Two, he’ll be successful. Only because, the team that he left, when they were struggling, is better than the team that he has – and they have … a lot of similar personnel. The guys that he left, Andre Iguodala particularly, [Samuel] Dalembert, these guys are better. They can hold their own weight. When he left, they couldn’t hold their own weight, he had to make them better. Now, they’re going to make him better. And you saw the emotion he has coming back to Philly. It’s going to be a great situation for him, if he works hard – which I’m sure he will – and leaves it on the court, they’ve got a real chance to make the playoffs this year.

SMW: They’ve made the playoffs each of the last two years. This year, they’re off to a bit of a rough start …

Kenny: Rough start, but he can turn that around. And all of a sudden, there could be excitement in that building. Because, if Elton Brand plays anywhere near Elton Brand – A.I., Elton Brand Andre Iguodala, [Marreese] Speights … Thaddeus Young, I mean these guys, they know how to play. They’re just not playing well together right now. But their talent level has put them in the same talent pool as Atlanta. Atlanta has a lot of talent. …

They have a lot of talent. Their talent pool now, when he comes in and Lou Williams comes back, is the same as a Hawk team that’s the four seed.

SMW: Kind of the top of the second tier.

Kenny: Right. They’re not Boston, no they’re not Orlando, no they’re not Cleveland. But they’re next. That next pool, Washington –

SMW: Miami.

Kenny: Miami, they’re in that – that talent pool is not bigger than the Sixers’ talent pool now.

SMW: How much do you think the [2004 Pacers/Pistons brawl] hurt the league and set it back?

Kenny: I think it actually helped the league put some things in perspective that they wanted to do anyway.

SMW: The dress code?

Kenny: The dress code. Just implemented certain things on behavior, that had started to slip a little bit. Becoming less and less of a corporation and more and more of a mom and pop. And we’re a corporation.

SMW: I always thought the brawl was the defining moment of the decade in the NBA. … It made me see the behind-the-scenes aspects of the league more than I had before.

Kenny: Really? That’s a tough one for me, because I’ve always been behind-the-scenes. So it’s tough for me to say that.

SMW: But when that happened … that’s when it dawned on me the social position the league was in. The situation with the fans and players, and the disconnect that was there. I really think that the league has tried to come back from that, but it’s been – I get the feeling that if another thing happened, like Knicks/Nuggets a couple of years ago, that it would set the league back again even with the progress that’s been made.

Kenny: I think right now, that the league is at it’s highest. I think it gave them an opportunity. It’s like, your mom says ‘clean your room, clean your room, clean your room’. Why clean it? Everything’s good. Then someone trips over something in your room, and they fall and get hurt. Okay, now you’re going to have my attention. And then now, I’m not even going to tell you to clean your room. If you don’t clean your room, then this happens and this happens and this happens. So it was more of that.

A lot of the the things they wanted to do, I think they got an opportunity and a reason to say, ‘yeah, you’re right.’ … The league is at it height, guys are making the most money they’ve made. The league is getting new deals …

SMW: Do you think the league still has a bad image, though? The players?

Kenny: I think we live in a world of instant access. And if you look at a whole of NBA players, the 327, the image of the 327 collectively, is pretty good.