Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Longtime Inside the NBA analyst Kenny Smith appeared on the latest edition of The Pivot podcast with hosts and former NFL stars Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor, and Channing Crowder.

During the appearance, Smith said that the late, great Craig Sager, his former TNT colleague, convinced him to end his NBA playing career and join the media.

“When TNT, right when I was retiring, they were like, ‘Hey, do you want to be part of this?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ But I thought they were joking,” Smith, the ESPN and TNT sports analyst, said. “I used to come on; you know how we bring players on? I was one of those guys. They would just bring in and be like, ‘If you ever want to do this for a career, you can do this.’”

“The late Craig Sager… I was going to go back and play one more year. The Spurs called me. [Gregg Popovich]. He’s like, ‘Do you want to be on this championship run with us?’ And I was like, ‘Okay,’” Smith continued.

“Craig overheard it, because it was on speaker,” Smith explained. “He was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m like, ‘I’m gonna go back and play.’ He’s like, ‘You realize you’re good at this?’ So, this is before the internet; he goes to the newspapers that we had. He said, ‘You see what Larry King makes? You could be just as good as those guys, Kenny.’ That was the first time anybody ever said to me, like, ‘You could be good at this.’

“And now, the astronomical numbers that we get paid now… My last one-year contract was more than my first whole NBA contract. It’s crazy! I get paid more to talk about the game than play the game? Like, than play it? Are you serious? But our numbers back it up. Even this year, we’re up 143 percent, being on ESPN and ABC.”

Kenny Smith says Craig Sager was the first person to tell him he should go into media. After TNT offered him a job, he wanted to play his final year with the San Antonio Spurs on a one-year deal from Gregg Popovich but Sager told him, “What are you doing, go the media route pic.twitter.com/JrPrwPv1gD

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Smith has been a star on Inside the NBA since 1998, bringing measured basketball analysis and commentary that have fit in perfectly on the studio show alongside the banter from Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal.

Sager was spot-on with his assessment and advice to Smith, and Smith made a great decision to take that advice.

The post Kenny Smith explains how Craig Sager convinced him to go into media appeared first on Awful Announcing.