In what must be regarded as at least a small triumph for the so-called New Media, the “All the Smoke” podcast scored an interview last week with Andre Miller, the retired point guard who spent two-plus of his 17 NBA seasons with the Sixers.
Notably taciturn while toiling for nine teams during his career — he was approachable, but hardly expansive — he talked and talked and talked on the pod, for over an hour. Talked about his life-long love of roller skating and junk food. About players taking out hits on other players. About working out along the freeways of his native Los Angeles and going into a food coma when he played in Portland.
His candor and comfort level were no doubt due to the fact that his interviewer was another former player, Matt Barnes, who co-hosts the pod with fellow retiree Stephen Jackson (absent on this occasion). Miller also had some friends with him, and they chimed in from the periphery every now and then, as shown in the YouTube video of the pod.
No matter the reason, it was Miller as he has seldom allowed himself to be seen. Now 49 and out of the league since 2016, he has spent the last three seasons as the head coach of the Grand Rapids Gold, the Denver Nuggets’ G-League affiliate (a fact noted in a February 2023 piece on this website). He told Barnes he is moving on from that, though he hopes to remain in the game in some capacity.
And when Barnes asked Miller about the December 2006 trade that brought him from Denver to Philadelphia in exchange for no less a player than Allen Iverson, he said it stung to leave a promising Nuggets team.
“I was mad,” Miller said. “Philly was trash. I was so hurt, it was the first time I talked in the locker room. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t come here to lose.’”
The Sixers nonetheless finished 35-47 his first season in town, then went 40-42 and 41-41 the next two. Miller was excellent, though, averaging 15.9 points and 6.9 assists in 221 games with the team. It was the most he scored in any of his nine NBA stops.
“Man, I had fun over there,” he told Barnes, also a Sixer for 50 games during the ‘05-06 season. “That was one of my fun times, to be around (Andre) Iguodala and Louis Williams, because I saw Allen Iverson in him.”
Miller later told Barnes that Iguodala was one of his favorite alley-oop collaborators. Also one of his funniest teammates, which is no small surprise, considering Iguodala preferred to shield his sense of humor from outsiders during his playing days.
As might be expected, Miller crossed paths with many others who had Sixers ties during his long career. While at the University of Utah, he would work out over the summer with members of the Utah Jazz. That included Jeff Hornacek, who had played in Philadelphia for a season and a half after coming over from Phoenix in the Charles Barkley trade in 1992.
After scrimmaging one day, Hornacek took Miller aside and gave him some tips about shooting. It could be argued that it didn’t really take, as Miller, so adept at so many aspects of the game, never became a reliable marksman. Still, Miller told Barnes, “That meant so much to me, man.”
Miller also said on the pod that he slept in the closet of a place rented by future Sixer Keith Van Horn when he first arrived in Utah; Miller was working in a junkyard and a bar at the time. One of his first coaches in Cleveland, which made him the No. 8 pick in the 1999 draft, was John Lucas, not far removed from a disastrous two-year run in Philly. (Lucas, Miller said, called him “Richard” because of his resemblance to Richard Pryor, the late comedian.) And one of Miller’s favorite teammates was Elton Brand, with whom he played for a season with the Clippers, well before Brand landed with the Sixers.
And what of his love of roller skating? Miller said he took it up when he was 9 or 10 and continued to skate throughout his NBA days, making friends in various cities as a result of that. Still does it, too.
“That’s my hobby,” he told Barnes, “even though my feet hurt. … That’s always been my hobby.”
His food preferences, meanwhile, run toward ribs, chicken and chocolate. He told Barnes that he over-indulged on the latter so much one time in Portland that he had to be hospitalized. And he would routinely eat himself out of shape each offseason, then slowly work his way back.
He did that, he told Barnes, by playing pickup ball. Also via some less conventional means.
“I’d go run the side of the freeway after the club,” Miller said. “... I wasn’t no drinker like that, but in order to get in shape … we’d go to a club and I’d be like, ‘Let me out (of the car), man. Let me out. Let me out.’ ”
Guess it worked for him. Miller was one of the most durable NBA players of his generation, fashioning consecutive-game streaks of 632 and 239 games. The first ended when he served a one-game suspension for shoving Blake Griffin, then a Clippers rookie, while playing for Portland in ‘10-11. A video on the “All the Smoke” YouTube page shows Griffin twice pushing Miller from behind, and Miller responding. But according to what Miller told Barnes, it went a bit deeper than that.
“It was basically like we had a hit out on Blake Griffin,” Miller said. “This dude’s flying all around the rim, dunking and stuff, throwing elbows. And he just got loose for a little bit, and I got a chance to get a hit in. And I ended up getting suspended.”
Another instance of Miller showing a side of himself that was seldom seen. Every now and then that guy came out, and that was again the case last week. Refreshing to see, and interesting that he allowed such a full picture to emerge, this far after the fact.
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