In addition to verbally abusing a local reporter on Friday night, Nuggets F Kenyon Martin may or may not have anything to do with a couple of his pals hassling a heckler. From the New York Post’s Peter Vescey.
Should the NBA determine Kenyon Martin had any role whatsoever in two of his friends menacing two fans (one innocent) for taunting the Nuggets’ inactive forward during a Denver game last week, his punishment can’t be harsh enough.
“Why don’t you suit up, chump (Martin understood him to say ‘punk’)?” goaded the guy.
How Martin’s involvement can be proved is awfully unlikely. Let me rephrase that: How it can be true is highly implausible. I’ve yet to read a single account where anybody says the renowned chucklehead was witnessed issuing any such marching orders – either verbally or with eyes/head movement – to his peeps whom he refuses to identify, at least to the media.
Those same two fans attest Martin got up (he denies it) and said something to the heckler whose language, by all accounts, wasn’t vulgar. Martin’s disputed retort to the fan might’ve triggered his friends’ overreaction, or maybe they were near enough to hear their meal ticket being called out and took matters into their own hands.
At the same time, there’s no doubt Martin had words with at least the innocent season-ticket holder after the game while the fan was talking to security outside the locker room. But nobody has sworn out an affidavit, as far as I know, accusing Martin of communicating hostility to his posse – no, not Kendra Davis and Bob Huggins.
Any way you look at it, unless there was some prearranged signal to set Martin’s hoody vigilantes into motion, and someone admits it, it’s impossible to hold Martin responsible for the offensive behavior of his posse.
Elsewhere in his Sunday column, Vescey joins Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry in condemning Charles Barkley’s characterization of the Sooner state as “no place for Black people”, calling Barkley’s remarks “the most ignorant thing I’ve heard since the last thing that recklessly dribbled out of his mouth.”
Echoing Phil Mushnick’s stance on the Round Mound Of Rebound, Vescey charges that “anybody but Sir Charlatan would’ve been fired long ago for ceaselessly contaminating the airwaves with his racist comments and warped perspective.”
Of course, it should be noted that unlike Mushnick, Vescey fancies himself a more qualified talking head for a basketball halftime show. Surely it is just a coincidence that the only persons as frequenly brutalized by Vescey as Mitch Lawrence and Frank Isola are Barkley and Stephen A. Smith?
I can only presume that Vescey has spent more time in Oklahoma City than I. Had Barkley merely said “Oklahoma City is no place for people of any race” this would really be an interesting discussion.