CJ Miles: He Played 17 Years in the NBA. Now He's the One Telling the Stories.
All The Smoke
The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartPodcasts
4.7 • 7.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
CJ Miles spent 17 years in the NBA and has stayed around the game in a completely different role. It's hard to put CJ in a box. He writes, he takes photos, and most importantly, he tells stories. Matt and Stak got up with CJ to talk about this new chapter of his life, what it was like being one of the last players to jump straight from high school to the league, and the stories that come with 17 years of NBA experience. We touched on everything from the Utah Jazz to Larry Bird personally recruiting him to the Pacers, to the ongoing debate about which state produces the best basketball players: California or Texas. This one is filled with stories, laughs, and real game on how to transition from being a pro in one world and build something in another.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.0 | Welcome back to All the Smoke Day 2. |
| 0:07.4 | We got a straight to the league guy today. |
| 0:09.6 | Played 16 years. |
| 0:12.5 | Second act is interesting. |
| 0:14.1 | I definitely want to hear about this. |
| 0:15.8 | Retired in 2022 now as a writer and a photographer for the NBA. |
| 0:20.4 | Welcome to the show, C.J. Miles. |
| 0:25.4 | Talk to us about your transition from the league to actually writing for the league and photographing for the league. |
| 0:32.7 | That's an interesting route that I haven't heard. |
| 0:35.1 | Maybe I'm wrong. |
| 0:35.7 | I haven't heard another player kind of take that route. |
| 0:55.2 | Yeah, man, it just came from, first of all, love of the game, right? Wanting to figure out new ways to stay involved with it, stay in relationship with it, doing AAU, doing all these different things, right? And then I was already in the photography before I retired. Okay. I was carrying my camera around plenty. I just obviously wasn't shooting basketball because I was hooping. And then I just was able to transition all that |
| 0:58.6 | into it. Writing the same thing. I was already doing music, doing poetry, doing all that stuff. |
| 1:03.0 | So like I just turned everything into a lens on the game and then just trying to give out |
| 1:07.9 | different perspectives. |
| 1:09.2 | Journalists and NBA players kind of have a complicated history. |
| 1:12.8 | Obviously, it's changed a little bit with more former guys jumping into the media. |
| 1:18.5 | How do you observe and watch as a former player who's now, not necessarily on the other side, |
| 1:24.1 | but just in the journalistic lens now? You know, a lot of journalism now has got a lot of heavy bias in it. Right. Like it's never just about the game. It's about this conversation they bring in to dress around the game, right? Like a relationship they got with a player they don't like or having like. Shit is nasty and disgusting right now. So like I think what our lens is former players without that bias, attacking the game, gives us a different outlook, right? Like, because I know, and I have no problem speaking the truth about it. Like if somebody stink right now, they stink, right? Like I ain't trying to dress it up. I like his game, but he stink right now. But I also think to your point, because you've done it, you know how to critique without |
| 2:02.5 | disrespecting. |
... |
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