Written by Zach Harper | 18 May 2009

I've largely stayed away from the whole Kenyon Martin-Mark Cuban battle because I found it to be one of the more inane and ignorant war of words that I've ever read. Both guys were in the wrong. Both were acting juvenile. And both failed to be contrite and move past it.

I stayed away because I hoped it was just fodder for a slow news day (despite being right smack in the middle of the NBA Playoffs) and a reason to inject some life into a largely one-sided Mavs-Nuggets series. I hoped it would just go away once the series was over and after a couple of days of rest for the Nuggets, I finally got my wish when I heard nothing new about this story.

As far as I knew, Cuban had called Kenyon a "thug" to Kenyon's mom. Then Kenyon busted out with the typical athlete response of "how dare you address my family" despite the fact that he was captured on video threatening Mavericks fans and unnecessarily swearing like a fifth grader that just discovered the F word. Then after Kenyon Martin told reporters that he'd "take care of it" we were all pleasantly surprised when he didn't try to rectify the situation like Motaw did in the last game of the tournament when Kyle Watson's team beat Birdie's Birdmen in Above the Rim. Mark Cuban allegedly reached out to Kenyon and his mother, was declined an opportunity and apologized through his blog, which I'm almost certain Kenyon's mom and Kenyon himself have at the top of their Google Reader.

So case closed. No need to discuss it further.

But wait...

Surprise, surprise. Kenyon won't let this go. Even though his team has moved on to the Western Conference Finals and he should be focused in on game-planning and stopping the defending NBA Western Conference champions. But he isn't. He's still talking about Mark Cuban.

Here are his comments to HoopsHype.com:

"He's a coward. He couldn't face it. You all read the only apology that he's made [on his blog]. The world got to see it before the person who it was meant for got to see it. That tells you how that goes. I ain't never known nobody apology to somebody through other people."

Despite, the beautiful prose in which he addressed the situation (and don't think for a second that you won't hear from my lawyer about copyright infringement for using a triple negative. And don't even THINK about dropping a quad-negative or a quintuple negative in an interview anytime soon. Those are mine!), I have no clue why he's even talking about this still. He added this:

"Me and my mom ain't going to lose no sleep if we don't talk to Mark Cuban. We're going to lay our head down and sleep well every night. I'm still playing right now. [Cuban's] got time to think about all that. I got games to win right now. So give [Cuban] time to think about [what he might do]."

You're right, Kenyon. You ARE still playing. Cuban's Mavs are the ones that had to go fishing with Kenny Smith, which seems like an odd consolation prize for being knocked out of the playoffs. How about you try to be a freaking adult, K-Mart? How about you try to be the bigger person in this situation? How about you let bygones be bygones? Grow the hell up.

And Cubes, there's no need to respond to this in the media. Forget about Kenyon's behavior. Forget about your intentions to apologize to Kenyon's mom in person. There's no need to express this in the magical internet postings any more. Just go about your business, make the extra effort, and bury this without any fanfare, publicity, or public fanfare. This is a stupid story that is completely unnecessary and seemingly has no end.

I just watched Notorious for the first time this past weekend and it reminds me of that a little. Obviously, I wasn't in the Death Row Records or Bad Boy Records camps during the time of this feud in the mid-90s. I was still trying to figure out why Rony Seikaly had a job and how I was the only person outside of Milwaukee completely enthralled with the Lee Mayberry-Todd Day backcourt. But with the little knowledge of Hollywood storytelling that I have and how scripts can skew the true story, it's probably safe to say that Biggie Smalls wasn't nearly as innocent in the B.I.G.-Tupac feud that ended in bloodshed. It could have easily been avoided or rectified well before it got out of hand. And that's sort of how I view this Martin-Cuban feud. I'm pretty sure it won't end in gunfire after a Mike Tyson fight but it's clearly gone on far too long.

But maybe that's not the best example. Maybe the best example comes from Saved By the Bell. Zack and A.C. (the A.C. does not stand for abnormally cruel; it actually stands for Albert Clifford) once fought over a new girl in school, Joanna. It was the simple case of two guys having a women come between them and causing a senseless fight that could have been avoided if they just talked things out from the get-go. Instead, they ended up fighting:

And this is kind of how this K-Mart/Cubes fight has gone. No, Kenyon is not trying to break up a study date between Mark and Kenyon's mom. And Cuban certainly didn't send a fake mom into a movie date with Kenyon and his own mom to break things up. In fact, I have no information regarding a possible movie date with Kenyon and his mom. But it's pretty easy to see the other similarities between the two feuds and I wouldn't be shocked if it ended with Kenyon and Cuban pouring punch down each other's Dockers at some league-wide function later this year.

And if you think the only reason I wrote this entire post is to show a Saved By the Bell video then you've been paying attention to this site.

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