Kenny Smith Says NBA's Clippers' Punishment Is Appropriate, They Cheated

Ran into Matt Barnes the other day and he had an interesting take. He basically says he feels like this year could be the year for Bronny because he's coming out of dad's shadow, he's doing his own thing, he's he's able to kind of make his own name and apparently there's been a lot of people online like kind of turning the opinion a little bit saying like I've seen videos of him looking like the development has popped. He looks different. Well typically a third year of most players is the year they kind of figure it out. First year is like deer in the headlight, second year is like okay am I going to get an opportunity to play and in the third year the team takes the opportunity to say okay you're going to be slotted this amount of minutes. So the third year is probably I think in any profession not just sports that's the year where people say okay I bet your third year on the camera you were better than your first. Oh I was I got nasty with the 10,000 hour principle. It's just you know and he had an unfortunate you know with the heart condition that he he didn't play a senior at college so he went from really playing high school basketball to playing pro basketball. Most people can't do that right and so you know this is now he would be a junior in college, he would be physically ready, he would be mentally ready, understand it is. I you know I just looked at him going from like high school to college I mean high school to pro which is that's that no one does that. Right. Very few people can do that. He kind of got he kind of had a tall order. Yeah yeah he played I think seven eight games in college basketball then went pro. So he never played against the best players you know you play against the best high school players and jump to pro that's too much. But does that give you kind of actually like a sneak advantage because it's like in your training in your real core training it was against the dogs. Well you know yeah you get trained and you get to be around the habits of pros but you're not a pro yet you know and so physically you're not a pro, mentally you're not a pro. So I think you know third year this is the year this is a good year for him regardless of if LeBron was there or not this would have been a good year for him yeah in terms of development. This is uh you know I mean I hope that that pans out because nobody wants to lose that draft pick you know you see teams look at the what's happening with the Clippers you know. Yeah I mean but three years three years three years it's most guys if you look at most guys third year that's their best year uh out of the first three. Any thoughts on this this this Clippers situation do you think that was a fair judgment by the NBA? Yeah I think I mean you're going to have to suffer consequences for that kind of behavior yeah like you know you're you're vehemently cheating like you're not just you know toeing the line you're you're actually cheating yeah and um and you're cheating at a high level you're circumventing the salary cap you're giving yourself an unfair advantage that no one else has and you have to have severe penalties for that or you know other people will say well we can do it. Is it severe enough to send a message to any other teams? Well it crippled it's gonna cripple their franchise possibly for the next five to seven years so the valuation of the team can possibly drop right so uh yeah that you take away five years of draft you know that's that's your core of how you develop your team uh so yeah yeah it's definitely tough. There are people that say people say yo Kawhi got off easy he well because the cash is nothing to him I mean not nothing but you know that well relatively he he got off uh in terms of play a little bit easier because of the trade if the trade never happened because now if you penalize him you penalize Toronto. Right. Who were not involved in it. Right. So it's difficult to penalize Toronto and penalize the Clippers. I got you. So that's where he he was lucky he got traded. There's people right now who say there's like an argument big internet argument all right if you're starting a team if Kenny Smith is starting a team and you got a choice between SGA and Brunson who are you going with and there's people like we we used to think it's obviously SGA right but I feel like maybe at least publicly the tide is changing. If I had to start a team I'm starting with Wimbayama. That's not that's not fair. I mean there's a guy who's in his third year in the league and he's and he went to the NBA finals and that's the worst we're going to see of him. That's crazy. That's not the best. Right. That's the worst we're going to see of him. That's crazy. And so I do it with Wimbayama but uh. You got to go between those two. Right now SGA he's the MVP of the league for a reason. His ability to do multiple things. Brunson is a great player and he had probably the better year. Sure. Playoffs. Sure. In the playoffs but the better year probably went to SGA. The better playoff. Right. Went to Brunson so you know it's closer than it was. But you still go with. I still would. I would slightly lean to a SGA just because of his age. Yeah. Because I would have more years of greatness. So if I'm starting a team today and I only have one year I might take Brunson. I feel like the hesitation because if I have one year I might take Brunson. Okay. But if I had a career from this point on and no I'm going to take SGA because he's younger and he's still doing it. Very thoughtful. I appreciate that man. One year. Hey man I appreciate you.