Kenny "The Jet" Smith, NBA On TNT

It's the JR Sportbrief show here with you coast-to-coast on the Infinity Sports Network. Right now, we're being joined by someone who has two NBA championships. You could catch him on TNT inside the NBA and he has a new partnership.

He's doing some work with our Harlem Globetrotters in Season 3 of this series about playing it forward. Joining us right now is Kenny the Jetsmith. Kenny, how you doing, man? I'm doing great.

How are you, man? Listen, we're going to talk basketball and, of course, so much going on with your partnership now with the Harlem Globetrotters. I know you're in New York. I'm in New York.

I got to ask you this. Them Yankee fans gave us a bad name last night, man. You're ripping the ball out of Mookie Betts' hand.

What are your thoughts on the World Series? I know you're a Mets fan. No, I'm a New York fan. And so, yes, that's classic New York. We got to take the ball out of someone's hand. That is classic New York. That's like every cab driver, every person on the subway going through.

You're fighting for every inch. So, it wasn't a bad name. It was very typical, unfortunately, at times, in terms of the sport. But as you're calling it the Yankees versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, I'm saying it's the Yankees versus the Brooklyn Dodgers. Oh, what a shot, Kenny. You had to throw a shot at the Dodgers.

I'll leave it to you. Do you think they're playing right? No, they were Brooklyn first. They were Brooklyn first.

We know what they are now. Do you think these Yankees have a chance to come back tonight, Kenny? I think it's, you know, of course they have a chance, but the difficulty of being down 3-1 in any sport, you know, from basketball to, you know, baseball, those are far and few. So, the great thing about it is that they're back-to-back, where typically in most sports you have a space in between, between games. So, these back-to-back games, I think, may help the Yankees.

Kenny the Jetsmith is here with us on the J.R. sport re-show Coast to Coast. You talk about the playoffs, and we know the NBA season just started. This is a controversial subject in the NBA.

It's Joel Embiid. We don't know what they're sitting him out for. Is he good? Is he bad?

Is he playing for the playoffs? They've just been fined 100K for not disclosing what the situation is. What are your thoughts on how they're handling him? Well, I think the one thing for Joel is, you know, being healthy. But I also think for the Philadelphia 76ers is having a clear transparency that, you know, that what's going on. Because I think that they owe that to not only to the league, but they owe that to fans around the world to understand what's really going on and to be receptive and understand when he will and will not play.

So for me, it's transparency that's really important. And I think that's big if you're the Philadelphia 76ers. Well, Kenny, with the season starting, we know that the Celtics are the favorites.

People are looking at them. Is there anything else that's taken, like, really caught your attention this part of the season, I guess I should say? Well, you know what? The funny thing is, like, that some of the usual stories, you know, the Yankees, I mean, the Lakers. Nobody's going to take the ball out of LeBron's hand, right? That's not happening?

Exactly. LeBron is, like, the only person, if you really think about this, if you didn't know that with LeBron James, right? And you only looked at him physically, the way he moved, you would not know what year he's in. That is, like, the most astonishing physical specimen that I've ever seen and what he's ever done, doing, and what the Lakers are doing now early with A.D. To me, it's surprising that they got off to such a fast start, three and one, with a new coach and LeBron and all those things as well. Well, we've heard your thoughts on inside the NBA as it relates to Bronny James. Do you think even later in the season we'll see him, or is he just going to be parked on the bench pretty much on the Lakers' side? Well, he's a second-round pick. He's going to go through what all second-round picks go through. They go, you know, back and forth to the G League, and a lot of first-round picks forget that as well. They go at the end of the first round. They go to the G League.

They come back. They have to earn their minutes and earn their time, and you're really there to develop. When you're a second-round pick, most of them, you're not looking to be key contributors in their first year.

You're looking at them to be contributors in their second and third year specifically. So he's no different, and he has an opportunity to do that with the Lakers. Kenny, the Jetsmith is here with us, the JR Sport Reshow Coast to Coast. When you think about both the East and West, who has the best chance of stopping these Celtics from repeating? Ooh, the East is tough this year, you know, Jay. I mean, like, if you look at the Knicks, what they've done out in Cat, you look at Philadelphia, if they're healthy.

You look at, still, Milwaukee. You know, these teams are primed, and any of them, if they were in the NBA Finals, you wouldn't say you're surprised. So the Easter Conference has gotten a lot more top-heavy than it's ever had, and so all of those teams have an opportunity.

And then you have teams like Indiana, who is trying to, like, break through and be one of those teams that really becomes contenders and not just playoff teams. Well, Kenny, outside, well, I guess still sticking to basketball, but more applicable to you, you're doing some work with another New York entity that's become a global brand, the Harlem Globetrotters. Tell us about your relationship with them, the project, the series.

Well, what's the good word? Well, we're in our third series on NBC. Play it Forward is the show. I'm the host, and I've had a long history with the Globetrotters. At 11 years old, I won a contest to shoot at Madison Square Garden, free throws for Curly Neal in front of 19,000 people, so I did that, and I made them.

I'll just say that. And the second part, you know, I was all, you know, in Houston, they used to train in Houston when I was in Houston Rocket. So I used to recommend players that would play pickup with us that could possibly make the Globetrotters team that did. I was a general manager for the Washington Generals, the team that plays the Globetrotters.

So I've had a long history. This is nothing new. So Play it Forward is just another avenue that it is.

It comes on Saturday mornings on NBC. And the one thing it is, it tells about the benevolence and the goodwill that they do outside of the game, not just showing all the tricks and all of the baskets and the hook shots from half court. It shows all the things they do from going into a music conservatory, which was owned by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And they actually brought kids there to learn music.

They do haircuts for the homeless. You name it, they've done it. And they do it around the globe. Well, talk about just the sustainability of the Globetrotters brand, because it's been around a very long time. It's now moved into the social media era.

It's not just America. They travel globally, worldwide, Europe, all over the place. Talk about how big the brand has become and still is. When you when you think of sports franchises, you think of the Yankees, the Dodgers, you think of the Knicks, you think of the Celtics, you think of the Lakers and you think of the Globetrotters. They're one of the historic and iconic brands in sports.

And it hasn't changed and probably it's done it longer than any of them. So for me, you know, being part of it and being part of it again is just an honor and a lot of fun. Well, listen, you talk about iconic brands and franchises. You've been a part of a multi Emmy Award winning show on Inside the NBA. We get a chance to enjoy you the rest of this year, hopefully into the future as well.

Talk about how that has helped shape what you've done career wise over the past 20 plus years. Well, you know, being a player is one thing, but, you know, I think the four of us between myself, Charles, Shaq and Ernie, we arguably been the voice for the NBA where people turn to over those two decades and they get most of their information, a lot of their ideas and a lot of their, you know, thought process about what the league is. So it's been fun to be part of that. We don't take that that lightly. We take it seriously, even though we have a lot of fun.

But we do understand that our voice carries and and it's important that we not only have fun, but we're super informative at the same time. Well, Kenny, it's good to see your voice is continuing, helping to elevate the Harlem Globetrotters as well. Where can people follow you on and off the court in a series as well with the Globetrotters? Well, if you watch playing forward Saturdays on NBC, you're going to see me there having a lot of fun with the Globetrotters. But also, you always catch me on your show. Hey, Kenny, I'm going to catch you soon in person, man. Always appreciate the time, OK? No doubt.