The Whistleblower: Smush Parker Tells His Truth

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

And I'm like, yo, that was a terrible call.

And then a light bulb goes off, bing.

And I'm like,

I should become a referee.

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So I want to fact-check your Wikipedia page.

Okay.

Because the explanation for why your name smush has to do with you playing basketball and you would smush people's faces after they stole the ball and you would be that guy.

Not at all.

Wikipedia is wrong in that fact.

Yes, violence was the origin that Wikipedia alleges for your name, but your name is Smush because why?

My mother named me Smush when I was a baby.

And it's a name that stuck.

You know, I was introduced as a baby as baby smush, and I grew up into just being smush.

Well, the name Smush, the way it was meant by your mom,

there's a cutesy aspect to that, then.

The opposite of being real physical in a game.

Yes.

Yes.

It was

a term of endearment given to my dad.

And, you know, when I was born, I just, again, I became baby smush.

I am actually William Henry Parker III.

And it's the first time I've actually shared that on air.

So.

Yes.

Already finding out stuff when Pablo Tori finds out that I did not know.

So I love that we're starting there because I feel, and this is just a theory that I'm going to carry as a through line, I think, through this whole conversation.

Okay.

The way that your your reputation has developed has been a thing that you haven't entirely been in control of if you went by william henry parker iii instead of smush parker i feel like your life would not have been exactly the same uh

i think you're right i think i would have became uh

i don't know what does william william henry parker the third sound like to you you sound like an executive at like jp morgan there you go

executive at jp morgan part of the reason I'm excited to talk to you is because you are an honest

and you have stories from a position and a perspective in the NBA and pro sports that we very rarely get to hear from or inspect because you had an up close and personal view.

of the people of the egos of the business of the business yeah of the superstars the big names the hall of famers and we tell the stories typically from their point of view we're obsessed with them.

We cater to them.

The business bends around them.

But you're right there in these scenes, in the movie scenes.

You're right there off to the side, in the middle, in a couple of just crazy scenarios.

It's like we just very rarely ask, what the f ⁇ does that guy think?

The other guy on screen as all of this is going down.

I'm not trying to say face.

I'm not trying to, you know, have a persona that other people think about me.

I'm going to tell the truth.

I'm going to tell my truth.

And whatever people, whatever opinions that people have of me, that's on them.

Okay, so I just got to say that I have been obsessed with Smush Parker and his truth for years.

And this is not just because he is a native New Yorker, just the latest Native New Yorker to come through the Publitori Finds Out Studios.

But because few characters in sports history have been so minor as the annals of the NBA are concerned, and yet so major.

Because Smush Parker, if you did not know, is most infamous for his extremely public beef with the late Kobe Bryant, the consummate winner, the consummate champion, who would do stuff like, you know, score 81 points in a single game.

And the answer to the trivia question, who is the second leading scorer of that game is

Smoosh Parker?

Oh, it's so good.

What do you have?

Four?

He had, yeah, hit 13.

He had 13.

It was something that if you were watching it, it just kept building.

Now you know why I had to score 81.

Tough days, man.

Listen to that applause as Kobe is wrenching his face to great comedic effect and smushing

Smush.

It's the sound of people adoring one of the most popular players of all time, a guy who is still a role model today across the world.

And also somebody who once called Smush Parker, quote,

the worst.

And so

that's all people really remember about about Smush, that he's synonymous with being a scrub,

which I think is a shame.

Because as we will find out together on today's show, Smush Parker has lived a fascinating life and he's also embarked on a new career path that is both shocking and funny to anyone who has ever met William Henry Parker III.

I want to get to where you came from because you're a New Yorker and I want to bring on local characters,

New Yorkers.

And not far from here, correct me if I'm wrong, is the place where you became

the smush parker.

Small parker, correct.

West Forth.

Yep.

Explain the cage for people who are not familiar.

Well, I was born in 81, so I'm an 80s baby.

My dad played basketball there.

My mom played basketball.

And,

you know, back in the 80s, it was my crib growing up.

During that era, you know, basketball and just the world in general, you know, we operated in community.

The guys who was waiting for next would take care of me.

You know, they were babysitters.

Yeah, they became babysitters.

They will watch over me, baby smush.

So when I literally say that that was my crib growing up, I don't mean my house.

It was my crib, like my, my, where I crawled around and I got dirty and I was playing in the playgrounds by myself.

And those guys became my uncles and they just nurtured me.

Yeah.

And West 4th Street, the cage, I I mean, to be very, very clear about this for non-New Yorkers, this is a world-famous basketball.

World-famous basketball court.

And it's the sort of court where imagine a movie, and you might imagine something like the cage insofar as there are 20-foot-high chain-link fences all around.

There's a three-point line, but if you might, yo, if you shoot a corner three, you might be fading away into that fence.

Corner three, there is no corner three.

There's no such thing as a corner three at West 4th Street.

That's right.

But they call it the cage.

So it's like you're playing inside of the zoo.

I like the cave.

This is the number one street ball court.

Like this is where basketball is at its purest.

The guys that play here are very aggressive.

So no one gives you an inch.

To get an inch, you got to take it.

It's the epicenter of competitiveness.

Everybody out there is ready to compete.

You have the best of the Bronx, the best of Queens, the best of Manhattan, the best of Brooklyn, the best of Staten Island, all congregating at this one small little, what is it, you know, 25 by 50.

It's so small.

But the best of each borough, that's the court that they play in because that's where the best of New York City went to showcase their skills.

Something that makes me laugh whenever I just watch pickup, walking by a court and being like, yo, that guy's wearing jeans.

That guy's wearing black Air Force Ones.

Yo, like, what does that say about him, right?

Just like, you don't know who's going to be there.

Not at all.

People just getting off of work, their construction jobs, their nine to five corporate jobs, and they have their basketball gear in the back of the car.

There was one guy who never not played basketball pickup without his Tims on.

He played pickup in Tim's.

That's crazy.

That is a New York legend at this point.

Oh, my God.

The idea that a guy would play in Tims.

Based on that fact alone, I just know that I don't want to be fouled by that guy.

No, not at all.

That guy was tough.

Tough as nails.

Literally was working with nails during the day.

Exactly.

So you bring all of this accumulated toughness from having encountered all of these people in this crazy ecosystem of streetball.

And when you're there starting organized basketball,

when do you get a sense of like,

I might be an NBA player.

I might make this an actual job.

So I never not believed that I was making it to the NBA.

Like, there wasn't ever a doubt.

So

when I saw, when I watched Michael Jordan growing up, and again, this is back in the 80s, early 90s, and I was watching Mike destroy the Knicks.

Yeah, of course.

Several times.

Over and over again.

Over and over and over again.

And I was like, I aspired to be just like Mike.

I wanted to be like Mike, just like those Gatorade commercials back in the day.

And I had a mindset of that's what I want to do when I grow up.

Well, there's a funny thing about New York guards, right?

The knock on like the New York guard was these guys can't shoot.

They can't shoot.

Why is that?

Because of how we play basketball.

What was the most played game back in the 80s and 90s in street ball?

Oh, like 21.

Exactly.

Everybody for themselves melee.

One against everybody else.

Let's just say.

Everyone versus the world.

Let's just say there there wasn't enough to run a full.

So let's just leave the number at nine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nine guys in the park, one in a play competitive basketball, didn't have enough to run full.

So we played 21, and you had to go up against nine players.

So naturally, instinctively, we had to create ways of scoring against multiple defenders.

In traffic.

In traffic.

So

you learn how to dribble.

I hadn't thought about this, but you're totally right.

And be a playmaker.

And that's what we did in the 80s and 90s.

We learned how to dribble the basketball.

So, naturally, we weren't in the gym or outside shooting jump shots, we were learning how to create off the dribble.

Yes, and that's the strongest part of a New York City point guard or basketball players game: being able to create off the dribble.

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So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, a 14 alcoholic, volume 40 by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Okay, so I want to fast-forward some here because you need to just explain what it's like to have a draft party where you do not get drafted.

The disappointment was at the highest of my life at that point.

Embarrassment, a little confused because I was given word that I would be drafted as high as seven.

I won't say the team.

I won't tell you the team who promised I would be drafted at seven.

And that wasn't the case.

So at the time in Times Square, there was a place called ESPNZO.

It was a sports bar.

Yeah.

That is maybe the saddest place to hold a draft party where you go undrafted, a temple to sports, and you're living a nightmare.

Yeah.

The good news is that you're incredibly resilient.

I mean, the story of your NBA life, which we're now into, is remarkable because

you're a guy who had almost zero job security.

Basketball here in America is a business.

No doubt.

No, not a lot of people know that.

More and more every day.

I learned that late.

I learned that when I was 36 years old.

I learned that 36 years old that basketball hair in America is a business.

So when I didn't get drafted, I was like, you know what?

I'm good enough.

There's nothing that's going to stop me from making the NBA.

Let me get back to work.

I went back to work, earned a spot, a walk-on spot on the team of Cavaliers, non-guaranteed contract.

Yep.

Every day I came in with that workers' mentality, that blue-collar mentality that I need to work and earn my spot on this team

because at any point they can let me go.

And it's not just any rookie season.

It's not just any season, right?

This is 2002, 2003.

This is the year before LeBron James gets drafted.

And so one of my favorite videos.

Oh, my God.

Are you talking about all the other players?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I say other players who hated on this high school player coming in to the organization.

I get lumped into that.

It's a local news report in Cleveland.

Yeah.

And you remember this vividly.

It's all of you guys getting interviewed, Carlos Boozer, Darius Smiles.

Because the team is,

of course, on track to get the number one draft.

Yes, LeBron.

And here is.

I know what he's doing.

You know what the listeners don't.

Is the 18-year-old from Akron truly the savior?

We have better players than him and his position already on our team, though.

His potential is probably the sky's the limit for him, though.

And he will come in and make an immediate impact like a Karon Butler

did for the Miami Heat.

I don't think you can really just bring a high school player in

and really just think your team is going to really turn around like that.

What people were laughing at was, of course, everybody being like, this is LeBron James kid.

When he shows up, he can join our bandwagon.

But yeah, you compared him to Karon Butler, which in your mind, you're saying for clarity

was a compliment.

Yeah, at that time,

that's, you know, Karon Butler, when he became a rookie for Miami Heat,

came in and made an immediate impact and was averaging double figures at that time as a rookie.

And I was like, yeah, this kid will come in and make an immediate impact like a Koron Butler did for the Miami Heat.

I didn't just limit him to a Koron Butler.

You look by far the least crazy out of everybody in that video.

But do you know, I still get people almost every day who say I was, yo, I hated on LeBron.

I actually got tagged on LeBron's page saying that these are my haters.

So, this is what I love about your life in basketball is that you're kind of like this Forrest Gump character who winds up in places and you're dealing with all of the consequences of like what it means to be in the future shadow of LeBron James.

So, we should go then to your time in Detroit.

That's what happens next.

You join the defending champion Detroit Pistons.

Larry Brown is the coach, which was a great cast of guys.

Great cast of guys.

Yes.

Rashid Wallace, Chauncey Billup,

Ben Wallace, and Wallace of Forest Age.

Trip Hamilton, Derek Coleman, Lindsey Hunter, Darwin Hamm.

It was a team full of veterans.

And here you are, like again, young point guard who is now on his second team in two years in the NBA.

And

there's a game

at the palace at Auburn Hills.

Yes.

And you might remember it.

I remember it vividly

because this happens.

The malice of the palace.

Ben Wallace baseline inbounding the ball to Smush Parker.

Smush Parker.

Yeah.

I'm the one with the ball right now.

And this is the part that I love because no one plays this video from like 15 seconds before it's setting up the action past Rip Hamilton down to Ben Wallace.

There's the round our test hard foul.

And while the malice of the palace is beginning,

I just want to point out where you are.

I'm just watching, taking it all in.

And just for people who can't see this on the DraftKings Network or on YouTube, everybody else is in the scrum, and you are literally the, like, you're calm, you're observing everything.

What is going through your mind as you are standing, what, like 10 feet as the most infamous, notorious brawl in sports history is happening?

You want to really know what was going through my mind at that time?

So I was playing for the returning champs, the Tread Pistons, who was being led by the great Tronti Billocks.

So you can imagine I wasn't getting no playing time.

And you can see here, it's the fourth quarter.

It's like less than a minute left.

I probably just got in.

I'm hungry.

I'm like, yo, I'm on the floor.

I'm excited.

And then this breaks down.

I'm standing there like, yo, I just want to play basketball.

What's going on?

I'm just trying to get a sweat.

So, just to be very clear about this, your perspective as the malice at the palace is unfolding is:

I was about to do something with this basketball and everything got in the way.

Exactly.

I was like, damn it, guys, can we just play?

I'm trying to dunk on somebody.

I only have so many minutes that I'm going to have

as a Detroit Piston.

And everybody decided to start fighting.

Now, our chest has jumped over the scorer's table and is trying to get down to the bench.

Oh, this is awful.

Fans are getting involved in the ball.

Jermaine O'Neal is punching a guy in the face.

Steven Jackson's running around.

And Smish Parker is where?

Half court, watching it all, because half court is the safest place to be.

I just like how the guy who grew up playing streetball in the cage gets to professional basketball and is like,

you guys are out of control.

Like, you're the guy.

I'm like, I'm not getting involved in this.

I had no job security.

Maybe if I had a five-year contract and I could, you know, afford to get suspended, I might have been in the middle of this.

I might have been in the middle.

It's a great point.

So, okay, so you go from there, you go to Phoenix.

And again, you just happen to wind up on the seven seconds or less Phoenix Suns

as Steve Nash's backup.

Steve Nash, he's in the midst of an MVP Yeah.

And you're on a 10-day.

So I wasn't getting any play-in time again.

But I was in practice, you know, working hard, you know, trying to let these guys know that I belong here.

And I'm excited to be here, but I wasn't getting no play-in time.

Yeah, this makes sense to me.

What makes less sense is how you end up being the starting point guard of the Los Angeles Lakers the next season.

No, it makes perfect sense when I explain it to you like this.

When I was in Detroit, who was I playing behind?

Conte Billips.

When I was in Phoenix, who was I playing behind?

Steve Nash.

When I got to L.A., who was there?

I don't even remember.

Exactly.

So think about it.

Seriously, who was there?

I don't remember.

They brought in Aaron McKee from the Philadelphia 76ers to beat a starting point guard.

Because you remember, Phil Jackson liked big guards, and he was a 6'5 point guard

who could come down and run the Triangle offense.

Yep.

He was the big name.

Man.

They gave him all that money to come there to beat a starting point guard.

That's right.

And I was a hungry smush in Detroit, but getting no minutes behind Chanti Phillips.

I was a hungry smush behind Steve Nash in Phoenix.

Those guys deserved the playing time.

I got it.

I was learning while I was there.

When I got to L.A., it was just Aaron McKee.

And not to say he wasn't a good player.

But at this point in his career.

He was on his

sensing

this could be my job.

Yes.

And I went in.

Listen, I went in there with the same mentality I went in with in Detroit and Cleveland and Phoenix.

I'm going to work to earn my spot.

So Phil Jackson is the coach.

Yes.

Kobe Bryan is a superstar.

Of course.

How do you learn that Smush Parker is now going to be the starting point guard of the most marquee franchise in the NBA?

So they never told me I was going to be the starting point guard.

I just showed up every day and I wasn't fired.

No, literally, I, you know, I went there to training camp.

I, you know, fought and clawed my way through training camp, earned my way on a non-guaranteed contract again.

Yep.

Two years this time.

I guess I played better than most.

Sure.

Matter of fact, you know, I'll be, I won't be humble now.

I did play better than most in the preseason.

And when the start of the season came, I was still on the team.

I didn't get fired, so I showed up the next day.

First game of the season.

You know, Phil Jackson walks into the locker room maybe 10 minutes before the game,

says, Smush, you're starting tonight, and walks out of the locker room.

And that's, and that's how I found out I was starting.

That was it.

That was the first time I didn't start in the preseason.

I didn't start in training camp.

I was never on the first team on any in the practice squad.

So just for context here, okay, so Phil Jackson of course

one of the greatest coaches of all time the Zen master hall of famer master motivator what was your relationship like with him before then never had a conversation with him we had training camp in Hawaii and for I want to say training camp is about a month and a half I was everything but smush he never called me smush he always called me smack

smooch smuck everything everything but smush hey smack get back on defense hey smack run the triangle.

Smooch.

Everything but smush.

And it was just hazing.

I guess

I need to earn his respect like everybody else.

Testing you.

Yes.

Yes.

For people who don't know NBA history, this is after Shaquille O'Neal has gone.

This is Kobe Bryant in I'm About to Win MVP mode.

This is Kobe Bryant without Shaq,

going on to, I mean, that first year, man, he averaged 35 a game,

41 minutes a night for Phil Jackson.

This is before Pal Gasol gets there.

And so my

understanding of your time in LA, of course, really only clicked in after

you were gone.

Because this is, and you know, when you Google Smush Parker,

what comes up 99% of the time?

The feud I have with Kobe,

unfortunately.

But it's an incredibly rich text that I want to sort of like unpack with you because I don't feel like it's been presented in a way that totally makes sense.

It doesn't.

Because the way that it comes into the public view, this is in October 2012.

This is years after you're out of LA.

And he says a quote that I'm sure

you are unfortunately being reminded of by me, the millionth person.

He says this.

He's talking to Steve Nash, by the way.

Okay.

This is him telling the story.

I tell Steve, you won MVP, but I was playing with Smush Parker.

He's playing with Leandro Barbosa.

I'm playing with Smush and Kwame Brown.

My goodness, Smush Parker was the worst.

He shouldn't have been in the NBA, but we were too cheap to pay for a point guard.

We let him walk on.

And that's the quote.

And when he says it, of course, there's like, ha, ha, ha, it's funny.

Like he's, you know, whatever, talking trash on like his old teammates.

Like that's amusing to people.

But at the same time, it was like, where is this coming from?

What is your understanding of what sparked his comment, seemingly out of nowhere?

So that spark has been there for years.

You know, it was,

you know, something that a snowball that I created.

I did a small, like, little interview outside of West Fall Street.

At the cage.

At the cage, you know, somebody was holding a recorder and a little, little camera.

And this was, I want to say the summer of 2007, my years after L.A.

And they asked me about, you know, my time in the NBA, my time as a Laker, my time playing with Kobe Bryant.

And when I got to answering about my time with Kobe Bryant, as normal, I answered it honestly, my truth, you know, what my experiences were.

And I said it was an overrated experience.

Playing with Kobe.

Playing with Kobe Bryant.

And now everybody who's who's a fan of Kobe's, including the interviewer, was like, hmm, explain.

What do you mean by overrated experience?

And because I have inside information, because I dealt with this man for two seasons, and my locker was here, his locker was here for two seasons.

Like,

I watched this man put on his shoes every day for work.

He watched me put on my shoes every day for work.

Starting back court, yeah, together, you two.

Yeah, so I was speaking from my experience.

It was overrated because the man never spoke to me.

I wasn't the 12-man on the bench, I wasn't the call-up from the G-League who was trying to just fill a roster spot.

I started with this man.

I was his coworker.

Like we shared a cubicle side by side.

How do you do that for two seasons and never hold a conversation?

Never, what's up?

Good morning.

You know, do you need anything?

Can I get you a cup of coffee?

You know, how's the family?

Nothing.

Two seasons, side by side.

And that's what I said.

My next comments hurt his feelings, and therefore he had to retaliate.

So what did you say next?

I shared a story about how I did try to talk to him.

You know, I'm like, I'm the starting point guard with him in the backcourt.

Let me just try to talk to him.

And I, you know, said, Did you catch, happened to catch the football game last night?

And he looked at me honestly, looked at me and said, You can't talk to me.

You need more accolades under your belt before you come talk to me.

He was dead serious.

I'm not even gonna get to know how that's disrespectful as a man, man-to-man, just self-evident.

Yeah.

So that set the tone.

Never spoke to him again or tried to for two years as the starting point guard.

And by the way, like you had your best years in LA.

In L.A.

Yes.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, it's not.

And anybody who watches those Laker years saw that we worked well together.

It was a chemistry.

So when I say that you had your best years, I'm not saying, yo, you got to know Smush Parker was an all-star.

I'm saying that Smush Parker playing off of Kobe Bryant, scoring 35 a night, was getting steals.

You were moving the ball.

You were running the triangle as best you could with a guy who didn't want to.

You averaged double-digit points with going with six to seven shots per game.

And to your point, right, you had some big moments.

I remember you jammed it on Andre Miller at one point.

Yes.

Good job.

Lakers have the numbers.

A three on two.

Smudge with the right hand.

Smudge Berker strong to the rack.

You had that big steal on Steve Nash in that series against the Suns.

They'd love to get it into Nash's hands, and they do.

They do.

Law knocked away.

Stolen by Clark.

Here it is.

Here comes George to Kobe Bryant.

Bryant inside.

It's good.

It's good.

Tie a game.

Seven tenths of a second remaining.

In retrospect, it was the back and forth that carried on.

No, it was this comment that actually, I'm sure, set those wheels in motion.

I said the problems in LA end and start with Kobe bryant

and i felt that way because as the leader

as the captain

as the star of the team if you don't communicate with your teammates how how is a team supposed to be successful

and so this is where it gets to 2012 2012 now and kobe is talking about how

gave him his little 30 minutes of fame again you know it's all good

how's the show wish him the best of luck he's playing in china right now right he's going over there a couple months too

Wishing the best of luck, man.

Maybe he'll get back to the NJ one day.

I can see what it's like up close together.

There's the interview that he gave where he's like being asked:

you know, who was the second leading scorer when you scored 81?

I have no idea.

Smush Parker.

Oh, that's so good.

So, we got four.

That's a jab.

It's very clear.

And then in 2019, he's talking about how, you know,

if he's being triple teamed.

Well, it depends who's on the team.

If I got smush parker lagging, I'm going to shoot.

You best believe I'm shooting that motherfucker shots.

If I got D-Fish back there, I'm kicking that shit back.

Oh, man.

100%.

Still.

And I'm just like.

And so the thing about your name, it almost was a verb for what he was trying to do to you.

He was like trying to smush you like a bug.

And it became this joke.

And it became a joke that everybody used.

Well, if you check the numbers,

just check the numbers.

I was the third lead in score of that team, third and scorer behind him, a Lamar Odom, which I should have been as a walk-on player.

What does it mean to be the other guy in the picture?

The other guy without the job security, the other guy who's scrapping for everything, the other guy who is trying to prove himself at a point at which he's encountering what one of the greatest superstars of all time

considers to be leadership.

Right.

Like this is, I think even Kobe later on, not ever specifically addressing you, right?

Because he never likes anything about you that was positive on the record.

But what he did say, I think referring to this time was like, that wasn't him at his best as a leader.

People didn't realize, you know, the teammate that Kobe really was.

You know, one thing that Kobe was a master of was putting on a face for

the world to see.

Yes, as

I don't want to, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking

negatively about the deceased.

Of course.

And I think something I want to make clear here, too, is that like at a certain point, when you are a historical figure like Kobe Bryan or Michael Jordan or Will Chamberlain or Kareem or whoever it is, right?

Like I believe that we should talk honestly.

because we look to those people as role models.

And so when someone is like, this is what it was like behind the scenes,

I actually think it's important for us to not mythologize beyond what is deserved, even as we are diplomatic and respectful.

And again, I'm not taking away from the player Kobe was.

No, no, no.

Indisputably an all-time great.

Yeah, he's one of the greatest.

No question.

Like one of the most decorated athletes to ever play this game.

I was there.

I mean, this is, you just rarely hear someone be like, it was overrated because,

and fill in all of the blanks in a way that'll make people like be like,

no, you're wrong.

I don't believe you.

People don't believe you, Smush.

They don't.

As players who play with them, we have our own conversations and our own stories, and we share the same experiences.

But when we get on this right here,

when we get in front of the cameras, they say something different or they don't speak on it at all.

Right.

Like I was, I've been the only one.

Literally the only person who's been brave enough.

And this is, of course, before he passed and then after he passed.

And I just want to be very, again, I want to be sensitive to this insofar as the tributes, the love.

I am not saying do not feel that way.

If that was your favorite player and he was, of course, a tremendous player.

Yeah, of course.

Did you ever try to reach out to Kobe Bryant?

I did try to reach out to Kobe Bryant.

It was after the 2020, the 2012 comments, but before everything else, like, you know, 2019.

Oh, oh, so this is like in the middle of it.

I

started to attend this church led by Pastor Louis Stryker Jr., and he's the hugest Laker fan.

Hugest Laker fan.

Which means he's a Kobe fan.

I thought it might be a cool thing to do to reach out to Kobe to see if I get him to sign a basketball and maybe a picture to give, to present to my pastor for Christmas.

So I wrote Kobe a letter.

And I don't remember what words were.

Yeah, paraphrasing, yeah.

Yeah, paraphrasing.

But what I do remember saying was:

young mind, young thoughts, young words.

And I said, I'm sorry for what I, you know, said in the past.

And the letter went unanswered.

I didn't get a response back from Kobe, but he did sign the basketball.

He did sign the picture.

Well,

what happened from there was he continued to talk.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so for you, I mean, from there, right?

Like,

it's just crazy where you go next.

Because you end up playing with the Miami Heat.

And the way you get that job

is nuts.

It's incredible.

Yes.

How do you get this job with the Miami Heat?

So you want to talk about polar opposites.

I'm hanging out in New York.

I'm watching the Roy Jones fight at 4040

by myself.

And who comes strolling in?

40-40 by himself, also Shaquille O'Neal.

Naturally.

So we end up in the same VIP suite, you know, just watching the fight.

It's just me and him.

And we are sharing, Laker, Kobe moments.

Now, that is a TV show.

I mean, just you and Shaq reminiscing about what it was like.

Yeah.

Bonding.

Just bonding.

Just, you know.

He's the coolest guy you'll ever meet.

By the way.

And

had his own, of course, very famous

enmity.

Yeah, you couldn't do without me.

Kobe, you couldn't do it without me.

Kobe, you can't do it without me.

Everybody, Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes.

Yeah, you can't do it without me.

And then later reconciliation with Kobe.

My favorite moment that we ever had was on the bus leaving the arena, leaving Arco Arena, what we do.

When we got there, people were mooning us.

Uh-huh.

So after the game, all of us put our our ass on the window and we mooned them.

And the guy was like,

Thank God they have Kevin's phones.

Yeah, I know, right?

That was my favorite.

That was my favorite moment, man.

And, you know, I'm a free agent at this point.

So he asked me where I was playing at next.

And I said, you know, I'm a free agent, you know, still shopping around.

And, you know, he makes a phone call.

Long story short, the very next day,

the very next day, my agent had a two-year contract with the Miami Heat.

Guaranteed this time.

My first guaranteed contract out of the six-year career that I had in the NBA before I decided to leave.

Well, hold on.

Hold on.

So

why did you decide to leave the NBA?

It was just stealing the love and the joy from me out of the game.

The game that I love so much that I grew up playing.

I love basketball.

Love playing basketball.

It was fun.

Yes.

I was was good at it.

I knew I was good at it.

I proved that I was good at it.

That part of

the game for me at that level just became unfun.

So I decided to, you know, leave the NBA and go travel the world.

So when you say travel the world, you mean this quite literally.

Yeah.

Give me the list of countries that Smush Parker played in.

Two seasons, two years in Greece, won a championship in Greece, played two years in China, won two championships in China, played in Russia, Croatia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mongolia, Tunisia, and Morocco.

That's Carmen San Diego shit.

Yeah.

Where in the world is Samush Parker?

Exactly.

And the treatment that you experienced abroad versus what it was like in the NBA was how different.

Man, I was the Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan on the teams that I played on.

Part of the movie of your life, and I believe it is a movie, by the way, is you go from being the other guy in these photos, in this game film, in this viral clip, to now being a guy who is treated as the center of attention.

And that must have just felt incredibly, profoundly fulfilling after being deprived of that.

I was never in the game of basketball to be notarized or to be held up on a pedestal.

I just went to play basketball, and I was able to do that overseas.

It wasn't worry of I'm not going to be here tomorrow, or I have a non-guaranteed contract, or I could be released, or this guy is, you know, he's making $15 million a year, but he can't hold my gym shocks.

So he's getting a playing time because he's being paid this.

None of that.

It was just basketball.

And that's what I loved about playing overseas.

It's funny, right?

Like in the world of NBA fandom, it's like, oh, you played overseas, you're a scrub.

Yeah.

Go to the world of real life, and it's like, I have three passports because I traveled the world being paid to play basketball.

Talk about it.

In some of the most beautiful countries on the planet.

Yes, sir.

Is literally a dream.

Yes.

I have a world of experience and worldly knowledge that I wouldn't have gotten if I just stayed here playing basketball here in the States.

And

that too is the beauty of basketball.

Yes, sir.

It's a global game.

You actually got to feel like what it's like to win a championship in Greece, in China.

Do you know that in Greece, when we won this championship, they literally like turned the city upside down?

And as far as the eye can see, it was just fans in the street.

And I'm up there holding the trophy.

And like, I can hear the chants from 30 stories up.

It was an incredible feeling.

What I imagine must be frustrating at the center of this, as you have been portrayed by all of these people now, collectively, following Kobe's lead, is that you just didn't love the game.

You didn't want it bad enough, right?

Like that, this part, the mama mentality idea is: I want it more than everybody.

I'm the hardest worker.

I love the game.

You don't.

Get on my level or go yourself.

And

what you're doing now,

what you're trying to do now, is maybe the most

undeniable way to express how much you love basketball.

Yeah.

Because Smush Parker today is trying to do what?

Become an NBA official.

I laugh a laugh of just like, this movie is crazy.

Right.

Because

how do you get the idea to be a ref?

It was a seed planted back when I was 13.

Every Saturday morning, I would wake up at 5.30 a.m.

religiously to get to the gym by 8.

And the guy who ran the gym, he was like, listen, you're here every day.

You know how to play basketball.

Do you want to ref these eight nine-year-old youth games for $15, $20 a game?

So that's where the seed was planted.

Didn't know, didn't have any dreams of being a referee when I grew up.

That's just what I did.

That was my first job.

And so when does the thought enter your mind as an adult?

I want to do that.

You know, going into my mid-30s, my body's not reacting the same way.

It's not healing as fast.

You know, I'm traveling the world, but now I want to be more, you know, at home, you know, here in the States.

So I'm thinking,

what can I do with life after playing basketball?

What am I going to do for the next 40 years of my life?

I think I was watching an NBA game, and I'm like, yo, that was a terrible call.

And then the light bulb goes off, bing.

And I'm like,

I should become a referee.

And so when the light ball goes off, do you know how many players had NBA players had attempted this before?

No.

You didn't know any of that?

I didn't know any of that.

No.

Because the list is short.

Very short.

Extremely short.

Haywood Workman, Bernie Fryer, Leon Wood.

Yeah.

And you're trying to be number four.

I'm trying to be number four.

Have you talked to those guys?

Because

the transition from player to ref

is, I hope, self-evidently

fascinating and crazy in a way.

To be on both sides of that aisle.

I actually have Hayward Workman's number on Speed Dial.

He's devoted himself in helping me in this process.

But the backroom structure of how to become one of those guys with the whistle.

We're talking about 70 to 80 full-time NBA refs.

There are 450 to 500 roster spots for players.

So the math, the statistics, actually harder to be an NBA reference.

I've said that.

I said it might be harder for me to make the NBA as a referee than it was as a player.

So you're trying to do, you're trying to shoot the moon twice.

I'm trying to do the impossible twice.

But to be a ref, like there are what, tests?

There's, there are like, there's a ladder.

There's the equivalent of like a hierarchy you got to climb up.

Yes.

That ladder is very vast.

That information that you need to know is very vast.

And what a lot of people don't know is the rules are different.

Yeah.

Which is shocking to even me.

Why are high school rules different than college rules and college rules different than NBA rules when it's all the same game?

Doesn't make sense to me, but now you got to learn all of it.

Yeah.

Even down to the mechanics, the way you make calls are different on each level.

So

when you say the mechanics, you mean like actually how you raise your arm.

Yeah, they want us to, just very structured.

They want us to look a certain way.

When I watch the game, I'm like, oh, a ref is going to call something in the first quarter differently than they would in the last minute.

And so there's like an art to how to control a game.

So there's a thing that they call at the pro level advantage, disadvantage.

Let's just get this on air right now because everybody thinks that contact is a foul.

People think that basketball is a non-contact sport and that if there's contact is an automatic foul.

No, basketball is a contact sport.

There's legal contact and then there's illegal contact.

But not all contact means it's a foul.

Let's just address that part.

Let's just address that.

I love that ref smush has finally gotten

it.

Let's just address that.

You know, now we take that illegal contact and we add advantage, disadvantage.

So if you're strong enough to play through certain contact, it didn't affect you, you, we let it go at that NBA level.

So what is,

in terms of the thing that opened your eyes the most in terms of like, oh, I, as a player, had this totally wrong.

What's the thing that you now appreciate that you didn't before?

I didn't know.

The entire game of basketball.

You're shaking your head ruefully.

The entire game of basketball has.

It's changed in my eyes.

I knew how to play basketball.

Did I know the rules?

Not at all.

Nobody outside of the referees knows the rules of basketball.

No, it seems simple.

It seems simple.

There's a level of this game that I didn't know, and I'm almost ashamed that I actually spoke to referees when I played.

I am, no, for real, I am ashamed.

And when people, when players talk to me now as a referee, I just laugh.

I chuckle because they are just as ignorant as I was.

If they knew what what we know as referees,

they would approach the game of basketball differently.

I love,

I genuinely love that you use we now because you're a ref.

And I want to know what your

colleagues, as when you were a player,

what do they think about you crossing to the other side?

They laugh at me.

They laugh because they know, I know what kind of person I was.

Put it this way.

I used to show up to tournaments and put my tech money on the table.

I'm getting a technical title.

You were the problem.

I was the one to, I challenged the referees to show up.

Amazing.

That's what I did.

If I was going to be on my best game, I want you to be on your best game too.

So I'm going to put my first tech money up.

right now because I already know that you're going to be falling asleep, that these guys are out here just for a hobby and a paycheck and some extra and they're not taking this game seriously.

They're walking up and down the court.

No, no, no, no.

If I'm putting my best foot forward, you have to put your best foot forward.

I'm going to call you out on, you know, not seeing a foul call.

I'm going to challenge you and I'm going to say some things to wake you up, but not disrespectfully.

Of course, you would go from that guy

to

hopefully the fourth player to ever become a ref.

God has, I say it all the time.

God has a sense of humor.

God has a sense of humor.

I say it to myself all day, every day.

like here.

I am a referee.

I just really can't believe I'm a referee.

I really can't believe it.

Right, right.

William Henry Parker III,

thank you for being smush.

Thank you, PT.

I appreciate you for having me.

No, thank you for

being around your old neighborhood.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media Production, and I'll talk to you next time.