Former NBA star John Salley says that Will Smith got to relax during his time away from Hollywood after the infamous Oscars slap.

During an interview with Vlad TV, Salley recently shot Bad Boys 4 with Smith and Martin Lawrence. Salley said that he had a conversation with Smith and Smith got time to rest after the slap.

Salley explained, “After Will did his smack, Will got to travel. Will got to step outside of all this stuff and when he was back he said — best rest he’s ever gotten, best time he got to sit back and look at things. We share books and he gave me a great book called Awareness and it definitely has changed my way of thinking too.”

Salley continued,”When you start realizing everything that happens is like the butterfly effect. Everything ripples down to something else and it was him having to get out of it. I always looked at it when I watched the smack — it seemed like he didn’t wanna do it but he was already committed. Because he was leaning back like he was fighting something.”

He later added that he felt it was a blessing that “people got to see that Smith was human.” He also noted the fact Will Smith is no longer in The Academy and thus can no longer win Oscars takes the stress away, saying: “Now you can just make movies because you love to make movies.”