Sometimes picking a shmuck is hard work. Sometimes the world presents you with such a vast sample tray of worthy shmucks, you have to employ a team of PhDs to measure their shmuckiness. On other, rarer occasions, the calendar presents a virtually shmuck-free week, and you're left to pick Bob Schaffer again, simply for his continued refusal to move to Utah.
This, however, was not one of those weeks.
This week, the world gave us Mark Cuban vs. Kenyon Martin, one of the strangest displays of the 2009 playoffs. And when Ron Artest and Stan Van Gundy are still around, that's saying something.
Cuban -- who's a bona fide genius, by the way, and will make more money in the time it takes me to finish this clause than I will in my entire career -- seemed to have this week's honor to himself after his Mavericks got hosed out of game three, and he responded by hurling spittle and "thug" bombs at the mother of Nuggets forward Kenyon Martin. Cuban's a buffoon at times, and this was the peak of his buffoonery. Or at least it seemed to be, until Tuesday, when he took the bizarre tack of apologizing to Kenyon and Mama Martin on his blog. As if apologizing on a blog counts. As if Mrs. Martin spends her sons' off days reading about HDNet on Blog Maverick.
But you have to hand it to Martin. He didn't simply let Cuban take the mantle of shmuck without a fight. He earned a nice-sized piece of the shmuck pie when he responded to Cuban's calling him a thug by acting like... a complete thug:
Martin also earned some shmuckness by having lips tatted on his neck. I realized he did this long ago, but the powers of shmuck are vast and retroactive, and those lips still freak me out.
So, let it be written: Mark Cuban, the faggot-ass motherfucker with the excellent T-shirt collection, and Kenyon Martin, the thuggish ruggish mama's boy with the lips tattooed on his neck, I hereby name you Co-Shmucks of the Week for the week of May 9 through 15, 2009. This honor is irrevocable. However, I will revoke this honor if you send a check, money order, cash, or maybe one of those cool retro NBA T-shirts to:
