In his rookie year on the Sacramento Kings during the late 1980s, Kenny Smith experienced a frightening moment that had nothing to do with basketball. He was getting a ride home from his coach, when their car was pulled over. Raised in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Queens, New York, Smith had a wary view of the police. He worried about the traffic stop of two Black men by a white officer. In the end, nothing happened, thanks to the unflappability of his coach – Hall of Famer Bill Russell, who told the cop he could give a ticket or a lecture, but not both. The officer recognized the 11-time NBA champion and let him go on his way.
“It was the first time, as an African American young man, that I had seen someone question authority that fast, that deliberate,” says Smith.
Russell, who died last year, left a lasting impression on the rookie. Smith went on to become a two-time NBA champion with the Houston Rockets and an acclaimed analyst on the Emmy-winning TNT show Inside the NBA. Now Smith is sharing reflections on the many role models he’s had in a new book, Talk of Champions: Stories of the People Who Made Me.
“I wish I knew all this at [age] 20,” Smith says, “all this different information. I’m trying to give it out. I really didn’t know, I didn’t realize at the time, the amount of people in my life who were so influential around the world. I thought this was normal.”
Collectively, he calls them “great people who did great things in their fields.”
Smith played high school basketball under standout coach Jack Curran at one of New York City’s premier programs, Archbishop Molloy. He went on to the University of North Carolina, where he was mentored by the legendary Dean Smith. His Tar Heels teammate was none other than Michael Jordan – who was known as “Mike Jordan” back then and drove a blue Monte Carlo, but was already showing his characteristic competitiveness on the court. Smith was frequently on the receiving end of that competitiveness. Yet he also remembers Jordan as kind. As a visiting high-schooler from Queens, Smith felt under the weather in Chapel Hill, and Jordan offered to take him to a local pharmacy.
In Sacramento, Russell shared insights on the mindset of a champion, which proved invaluable for Smith years later, on the Rockets’ back-to-back title runs in 1994 and 1995. By that time, Smith had witnessed a teammate’s transformation into a leader – Hakeem Olajuwon, whose conversion to Islam was accompanied by a growth in maturity. After Smith’s playing days had ended, he absorbed lessons from the late Kobe Bryant, including on a charity game to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina; and from his fellow stars-turned-analysts on Inside the NBA, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal.
On the show, Smith’s has also appeared alongside Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas, while host Ernie Johnson has been a mainstay throughout. Asked for his NBA finals picks, Smith says, “in the East, I still like Boston. In the West, I like Denver.” He explains his choices: “I think they’re complete, more complete than other teams.”
“In order to be champions,” he writes in the book, “you have to believe in things that you don’t see. I have to believe that my teammate is going to be there to help me when I’m on defense and I can’t see behind me. It’s like a faith in God, it can be that deep.”
The book addresses the issue of faith, including through the 23rd Psalm. Smith’s mother instilled a love of the psalm in her son.
“Whenever I’m in the mood, any kind of mood, I say it, in moments before every game,” Smith says. “It does not say there is not evil, not injustice, not things going on in the world, but how to react when that happens. It’s such a great psalm.”
In the book, Smith shares many other life lessons he has learned. One is being a good listener, including when it comes to constructive criticism. It was hard when his high school coach Curran said he wasn’t working hard enough to reach the NBA. Yet he realized there was a motivation behind it, increased his efforts and earned Curran’s unhesitating recommendation that UNC accept his star player.
Later in life, listening helped Smith get to know Detroit Pistons great Thomas and learn his side of an infamous moment in NBA history. In 1991, Jordan’s Chicago Bulls upended Thomas’ Pistons en route to their first title. Thomas and the rest of the Pistons refused to shake hands with the Bulls. It left a lasting distaste in Jordan, as captured in the documentary The Last Dance. Smith asked Thomas why he turned down the handshake. Thomas, it turned out, came from an era in which such exchanges between opponents were frowned upon. As the book relates, Smith explained that Jordan embodied a different approach: “He’s a person who, when you beat him, he will shake your hand … Especially if he’s the mountain that you’re climbing.”
Smith has had plenty of listening experiences alongside Barkley over their 17 years on Inside the NBA. As detailed in the book, the two have disagreed at times over the issue of policing and the Black community, including during the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2014. Smith reprints an open letter he wrote to Barkley during that time and discusses their subsequent, respectful exchange on the show. More recently, in 2020, Smith walked off the set after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Bucks had pulled out of their playoff game in protest at the shooting of Blake, who is Black, just months after the police murder of George Floyd. Smith wanted to show solidarity with the Bucks, but while his action was praised by many, including Russell, it drew criticism from Barkley due to a lack of advance notice.
In the book, Smith writes, “please understand that [Barkley] is as responsible as anyone for the voice that I have – and the voice that so many NBA players now enjoy. The fact that Chuck and I are on different sides of the fence on specific topics doesn’t do anything to change this.”
Smith calls Barkley and O’Neal “like brothers to me. I’m around them so much, probably more than some family members at times.” He describes his exchange with Barkley in 2020 as an example of how you can “disagree with someone and still love them.”
There are poignant accounts of Smith’s family throughout the book, including his parents, Kenny Sr and Annie Mae; and his siblings, Wanda, Gwendolyn and Vincent. He notes that his paternal great-grandfather was a slave, and that even after Jim Crow laws were officially banned, an informal segregation existed in St George, South Carolina, where his family has roots.
Growing up in LeFrak City, Queens, had its own difficulties. One night, his father was robbed but stayed composed and emerged with a dollar to take the subway back to his family. When Smith went out of the neighborhood for high school, he endured racist slurs. Yet the diversity of New York also introduced him to other cultures, an experience he continually references as helping him manage life’s challenges.
Smith also shares moments with his five children – Kayla, KJ, Monique, Malloy and London – whom he calls “a big part of what I do. I’m influenced by them, just as much as I might influence them. They’re very astute young men and women.”
Asked about advice for young people of today who are seeking out role models, Smith replies, “Be a good listener before a good talker. Be good at your craft before you expose your craft. You have to put in the work to be extraordinary, but don’t present yourself as ordinary.”
“Extraordinary,” he notes, consists of two words – “extra” and “ordinary.”
“Making a shot is pretty ordinary,” Smith says. “Multiple times in a row, that’s extra ordinary, extraordinary. Extraordinary is just doing ordinary things great. If you look at it in that perspective, you won’t feel overwhelmed, like: ‘This is unattainable.’ It is attainable.”
