Stanley Johnson could be what brings Kenny Smith to Detroit
By Cody Rivera
After coaching Stanley Johnson in AAU, Kenny Smith might have a chance to coach him again in the NBA.
With the departure of Stan Van Gundy, the Detroit Pistons are in the market for a new head coach. One of the candidates they plan to interview is Kenny Smith, a former NBA player and current analyst for TNT.
It would be difficult to imagine breaking up the crew of Smith, Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal on TNT, but ultimately, it could be Smith’s relationship with Detroit forward Stanley Johnson that draws him to the Pistons.
The relationship between the two goes all the way back to when Johnson was in the second grade and their paths crossed in AAU basketball. Smith coached a team called Aim High, and following Johnson’s second grade year, his team beat Johnson’s team by one point in the championship game of an AAU tournament.
Following that game, Johnson’s mother sought out Smith because she wanted him to coach her son. Johnson then spent the next five years playing under Smith for Aim High.
Johnson went on to play a successful high school career at Mater Dei High School in southern California, winning four state championships. He then played one season at the University of Arizona before being drafted by the Pistons eighth overall in the 2015 NBA Draft.
While coaching him for five years in AAU, Smith developed a very close relationship with Johnson and his mother, who eventually passed away from breast cancer. Smith said that he still has the last voicemail that Johnson’s mother left him before she died, and that message asked him to “take care of her son.”
Smith knows what it takes to be successful in the NBA, having been a member of the Houston Rockets teams that won back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995. But he’s been working in television for TNT for 20 years now, joining the network in 1998 one year after his playing career ended, and he has no experience working on an NBA coaching staff.
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Ultimately, that might not matter. Smith has a very deep and personal relationship with one of Detroit’s best players, and the opportunity to coach Johnson again might ultimately be what finally pulls him away from the world of television.