One of the voices of the NBA’s restart in Orlando later this month will be the NBA on TNT’s Inside the NBA, so it’s only right to ask one of the faces of that show, Kenny Smith, what he thinks of the whole situation.
Talking with Rachel Nichols, Pierce and Chiney Ogwumike on The Jump this week, Smith was asked whether he would’ve opted out of the NBA’s restart plans. Smith decided that a young version of himself would have gone to Orlando in a heartbeat, but if such an event had happened later in his career he likely would’ve passed it up with his family in mind.
The Jet then posted the same question to The Truth.
“Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right Kenny. The older you get, when you’ve got more responsibilities, you’ve been out for three or four months, and then think about this. In those three or four months, for some of that time you didn’t have gym access. So, I probably would’ve been like, ‘Man, I’ll catch y’all next season,’ especially if we were on a team that wasn’t going to win a championship.”
Later in the show, the topic turned to Smith’s time with the Houston Rockets, where he won two championships that are often asterisked due to Michael Jordan’s absence from the league for most of those two seasons.
“If MJ didn’t retire, I don’t know if you’d be sitting on those two rings player,” Paul said to Smith. “I tell [former teammate and coach] Sam Cassell this all the time, and we argue.”
But The Jet said that if his Rockets had ever gotten a shot in the Finals against MJ and the Bulls, they would’ve been a mismatch for the Bulls, especially during that two-year time span, when Chicago had not only lost Jordan, but Horace Grant, and before the franchise acquired Dennis Rodman. The Rockets were led by Hakeem Olajuwon, who Kenny believes the Bulls would’ve had no answer for, even with Jordan.
Watch below as Kenny talks about that, this year’s Rockets’ chances in the bubble and his aspirations to one day be a part of an NBA front office.
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