When you are making $6.9 million dollars a year it is hard to convince those who might make $40,000 that you could have it rough just like them. That is the impression Josh Smith gave last week when during an interview he mentioned life would be harder taking a pay cut for next season, an amount that equates to $6.9 million between what the Pistons owe him and his salary with the Clippers. That’s after making around $100 million for his career overall. I never thought he was purposely trying to make it seem like he was going to struggle, just that he chose his words badly. Lots of people jumped on him and he wanted to clarify what he meant.
@IamJoeSports
Josh Smith’s critics wasted little time calling him greedy and the epitome of an out-of-touch star. He was compared to Latrell Sprewell, who famously said he’s “got a family to feed” after dismissing the Minnesota Timberwolves’ attempts to re-sign him in 2004.
Smith countered that the difficulties about which he talked weren’t of a financial nature:
“The whole thing about it being “harder on me” comes down to family. It seems obvious to me, but maybe I could have said it more clearly. If you know the NBA, you know that moving to a new team is a decision that affects an athlete’s whole family. That’s even more true when you’re signing a one-year deal. With a one-year deal, there’s less stability because you know you might be moving again in a year.
[…]
When I was waived from Detroit this year, it meant I had to move to Houston in the middle of the year. Like any parent, you think about how your work affects your kids. You want consistency for your kids — consistent teachers, consistent friends, a consistent home. You want some normalcy for them. I wanted to go to the Clippers (that’s a business decision), but I also wanted to be sensitive to how it affected my kids (that’s a personal one). I can tell you that the conversations this offseason between me and my wife were more about where they’d go to school than about finances”
Those concerns are perfectly understandable and this is likely what he meant from the start anyway.
