What happens when you mix two of the most unapologetically outspoken NBA champions of all time, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, incredible athletes such as Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett, Hollywood A-listers such as Will Smith and Kevin Hart, a laid-back, comfortable set, and a whole lot of cannabis? You get more than 200 episodes of the wildly popular podcast All the Smoke and, now, a new coffee table book with the same name, featuring many of the show’s greatest moments.
Hot on the heels of their biggest episode yet — the Season Six premiere featuring an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris — Barnes and Jackson have begun to expand their empire into a new realm of sports entertainment with the recently announced All the Smoke Productions. From humble beginnings, the duo have grown to corner the market on relaxed, authentic conversations with stars from all walks of life and even covered tough topics such as grief, mental health, family, masculinity, and more.
Flip through the pages of the book and you’ll get a good sense of what makes Barnes and Jackson (and their superstar guests) tick: An unending desire to keep growing and learning, a passion for people and their stories, and a hustle that won’t let them stop.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Season Six of your podcast just started. You have a coffee table book, the book tour, and now you’re doing a two-city live, fan experiential event. Tell me a little bit about all the hoopla that’s surrounding the release of this book and everything you have going on.
Barnes: It’s just a tremendous opportunity to be the first podcast with a coffee table book. And partnering with someone as big as Simon & Schuster, obviously, that’s a huge honor, but it’s been a hell of a ride. To think that we started with J.R. Smith day one, and literally five years later, we’re interviewing the vice president. It’s been a fun journey with a lot of peaks. To be honest with you, there really hasn’t been too many valleys. We got to interview some of the biggest stars across any space in the world, and my favorite part about it is getting a chance to get to know them better. I’m already a fan of them, but to be able to sit down and kind of peel back some layers and really have in-depth conversations, that’s the best part for me.
Jackson: It’s been unbelievable, man, just continually going up and not taking steps back. Continue to grow the brand, continue to build the company, continue to grow with All the Smoke. It keeps leveling up. So I’m just excited with the direction that everything’s going. It’s a direction that we couldn’t have expected, but something we’re definitely happy with. And we want to try to take it as high as we can.
All the Smoke Productions is a huge deal. You have ATS Fight. You have seven regular programs. What’s the next big step?
Barnes: I think it’s really to continue to grow what we’ve built. We pour gas on what’s really working. This new boxing division [ATS Fight] I think could honestly be the biggest part of our company, once we get going. We just hired Andre Ward to be the head of that side of the company. We’re in talks with some other Hall of Fame boxers to build that out on the business side and on the content side.
We’ve dabbled in politics. We’ve done some traveling around the country and done some political content. We just grabbed DeSean Jackson and Shady McCoy on the NFL side of the game. We eventually want to get into golf. I think all this is a slow burn. We have two amazing documentaries we’re working on. We actually want to get into unscripted. So we want to be a full-fledged production media company. So far, I think we’re off to a really good start. We just got to keep learning and building.
From left to right: Former NBA stars Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes interview Vice President Kamala Harris on All the Smoke.
All the Smoke
I want to talk about the Kamala Harris interview. Did it feel different, bigger than what you’ve done before?
Jackson: It was definitely different for me, but it was an honor as well. To be at the VP’s home. When the VP invites you to her home, I mean, you can’t take that lightly, especially in the midst of everything she has going on. I have a lot of women in my family that look up to her, that look up to what she’s doing and what she’s aspiring to be. My daughter’s in college, and she wrote a letter to my daughter. All those experiences, being with her and interviewing her, you can’t take that lightly. I definitely hold it as an honor.
Barnes: I just think it was a tremendous opportunity from a business standpoint, especially as a new business. All the Smoke is not a political podcast. Some people are OK with crossing sports and politics, and others aren’t. You know what I mean? So obviously, we always want to stay true to our audience. But the way I looked at it was that it wasn’t a political interview. It was an All the Smoke interview. We sit down and get to know people and try our best to humanize people, and I think that’s what we did. I think we touched on a few political topics that we felt that are close to us in our community, but at the end of the day, we were interviewing a Bay Area woman who was a big time Warriors fan that used to come to our games when we didn’t know her. She would come cheer for us, which is crazy now that that person is on the front steps of possibly being the president. So it was more of a normal All the Smoke interview instead of a political interview.
You were talking on that episode about not reading the comments. I don’t know if you’ve seen the comments on your Harris interview, but they are full of right-wing bots. It’s pretty horrifying. Do you guys ever let that stuff get to you?
Jackson: Certain s— you expect, so it makes no sense to read the comments. But at the same time, we’ve been in this long enough where we know when to engage and when not to. And then also, at this point, we’re dealing with somebody of high esteem, and somebody we look up to, and have the honor to interview. It makes no sense for us to go on our page going back and forth with the bots, because that will take away from the interview and the respect we have for her. So we just leave that alone.
Barnes: Yeah, and I’m obviously someone that doesn’t normally shy away from confrontation, but to me, I feel like we won with the interview, and some people are going to love it and some people are going to hate it. People are going to hate it for different reasons and love it for different reasons. But I think at the end of the day, again, as I said before, she could have sat down with anybody, but she chose to sit down with us. We don’t take that lightly.
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How different is it for you guys to deal with that kind of stuff now, in this space, than it was when you were playing, because of course you always have people heckling from the crowds at games?
Jackson: Yeah, that was in person. A lot of what happens, stuff people say on social media, they won’t say to you in person. Our emotions were high and people were saying racist stuff at us while we’re competing on the highest level of basketball. So, you know, the emotions can take you to different places. Now I’m at home, reading the phone. I’m in a nice house, I’m chilling. I got a great job. My family’s good. Unless somebody’s being disrespectful to my family or something like that, it’s something that we’re used to now.
Barnes: People wouldn’t hate us if we weren’t doing something right. And they hated when we played because we were living out our dreams and making millions of dollars, and now they hate us because we’re doing a podcast and we’re making millions of dollars. So people are gonna be mad regardless. Like Jack said, at the end of the day our family’s healthy, we’re tremendously blessed, and we’re living good. No one can say anything that’s gonna take me off that.
You started Season Six with Kamala Harris. Where do you go from there in terms of guests? Who can top the vice president of the United States?
Barnes: It’s crazy. We definitely set the bar. We’ve got some amazing names cooking, though. It’s amazing how the ask now is a little bit different. We’ve always been able to kind of go and get who we want, but now we made a list of, ‘Hey, let’s go get these people,’ and their teams respond right back, or we don’t know them directly, and they respond back, and we get them on the schedule. So I’d definitely say that is one of the perks from this interview as well.
You mentioned this is one of the first podcasts to get its own coffee table book. How did that come about?
Jackson: I think, first, we gotta give Charlamagne tha God his props. He’s been a big part of us getting this deal with Simon & Schuster. But I think as far as putting the book together, all the credit goes to Dylan [Dreyfuss, head of partnerships at All the Smoke Productions]. Dylan did a great job with everything in the book, putting it together, the timing he had, getting the pictures and all that. Dylan’s a guy that’s a big part of our team. We gotta give him all the props for that book, and Charlamagne’s connections, along with Brian [Dailey] and Dylan putting it together, it came out to be a great book.
Vice President Kamala Harris (center) with NBA champions Stephen Jackson (left) and Matt Barnes (right).
All the Smoke
Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are the only players that get their own sections in the book. Was there ever any consideration for anyone else?
Jackson: I just feel like 200 years from now, when people bring up basketball, Jordan’s still gonna be the best to ever play the game. I feel like he was just meant to be that, and that’s not to take away from anyone else. I think Jordan is just meant to be that basketball player who could be the mascot of basketball, period. And Kobe is the closest thing that could be to Jordan, especially in our time. If you ever built a statue and put Jordan up there at the top, you better have Kobe right at his shoulders.
Barnes: I agree. We go back with these guys. Jack’s relationship with Kobe started at the McDonald’s game in high school. I met him when I got to UCLA, when he was a young Laker, playing against him, and playing with him. And then Jordan, you know, Jack got a chance to play for him. And the fact that we haven’t gotten LeBron on the show yet. So if we had got LeBron, maybe there would have been a third person that might have had their own section. But until that happens, I think those two guys are up there. And it was an honor to be Kobe’s last interview before his untimely passing.
Jackson: We will be honored to give LeBron his own section, because, you know, he does deserve it.
Barnes: Hopefully in part two.
I love the Welcome to the Big Leagues section in the book. When it comes to All the Smoke, both the show and production company, what was your Welcome to the Big Leagues moment?
Jackson: Well, for me, everything I say now about boxing, all the boxers take it personal. (Laughs.) You know, I don’t take it personal, but they take it to heart. They respect what I say in the boxing space now, so when I’m getting into back and forth with guys like, ‘OK now, you in the big leagues of boxing. Now you argue with these boxers. You gotta be careful. You better be careful going through these fights.’ (Laughs.)
I’m honest. They respect my opinion now, but one thing about it, I don’t want to box no boxers just like they don’t want to play me in basketball.
Barnes: For me, I think, it was being a trusted voice in the space, and that goes with having authenticity and a voice you can trust. The caliber of guests we’ve been able to get. You know, obviously being cool with a lot of people, but actually sitting down with them, some of the biggest stars in the world, and really having them open up about their lives and tell us stuff that they’ve never told anyone. That’s when I really kind of realized, like, ‘Yo, this is not just a sit down and talk situation. These are really high-level conversations.’ I think that’s why we’ve been successful.
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As someone who has been on the mental bealth beat for many years, I appreciate that topic getting a section of its own in the book. Why was it so important for you guys to highlight mental health in that way?
Barnes: I think because it’s not a topic that’s talked about amongst our community. It’s not a topic that’s talked about amongst men. I definitely think it’s more common now, and you know, the majority of us growing up had some form of PTSD, especially from violence and how we grew up in tough situations. The fact that we were able to overcome all that and become professional athletes and live out our dreams doesn’t mean that we still aren’t hurting in areas, or confused in areas, or still need to learn in areas.
So I just think that when people hear, ‘Damn, Kobe Bryant had to struggle with this,’ or ‘Matt and Jack started to struggle with this,’ or ‘Will Smith struggles with this.’ When you hear people that you look up to, or stars that are bigger than life, let you know that, ‘Hey, man, I struggle with the same s— you do,’ I think it makes people more comfortable to open up and possibly get some help for it. So for me, that’s probably one of the most important things that has come from this situation as well, now that you bring it up, just people feeling comfortable enough to have this conversation on this kind of platform and this kind of level.
Jackson: To touch on what Matt said, it’s good to talk about it, because guys felt like you were weak for speaking your mind or getting things off your chest or trying to get help. You were looked at as weak for so long for even mentioning stuff like that, but it’s good that we can bring it up. Certain people can hear about it, because where we’re from, you only know what you see, and if you get to see other people talking about it, then that’ll help you open up yourself.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
Barnes: Believe in yourself. I think that was so instrumental during my journey. I was drafted and cut, went to the G League, and got in the NBA, and then, you know, bounced around my first few years. I was having doubts about my career and whether I was going to continue to make it or not, and I remember Chris Webber just said, ‘Bro, if you don’t believe, how’s anyone else going to believe?’ So I think that holds true, not only in sports, but just life in general. If you don’t believe in yourself, who’s going to believe in you?
Jackson: My mom told me something as a youngster: ‘Nothing beats a failure but a try.’ I failed many times, but I kept trying and look where I’m at today. Still being successful. Still got a long way to go. So I held on to that since I was a kid. Nothing beats a failure but a try.
Scott Neumyer is a writer from central New Jersey whose work has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, GQ, Esquire, Parade magazine, and many other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @scottneumyer.
