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Did you hear how they’re twisting your words?”

One of my sisters had been trying to get a hold of me for an hour.

Huh?

I had no idea what she was talking about.

When I found out half the sports world was calling me “greedy,” I wasn’t online or anything. I don’t even have Twitter, man. I was jogging in the park with my family. You couldn’t really even call it jogging because my kids are still pretty small. It’s more like power-walking. My wife and I were trading off pushing our two-year-old son in the stroller. My six-year-old son was all about the workout. My eight-year-old daughter didn’t love it — let’s just put it that way — but she’s eight and wanted to be with her friends, so I get it. My wife and I believe it’s important for us to do outdoor activities together during summer vacation. I call it Smith family fitness time.

Let’s just look at what I actually said so we don’t get it twisted. This is the quote people shared:

“It wasn’t about the money because of the Detroit situation, but at the end of the day, I do have a family, so it is going to be a little harder on me this year. But I’m going to push through it and try to do something long-term after this 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.

Josh Smith, The Players' Tribune