Kenyon Martin Says He's Not a Thug, Tries to Continue Feud With Mark Cuban

During last season's playoff series between the Nuggets and the Mavericks, things got a little crazy between Kenyon Martin and Mark Cuban. After Game 3, Cuban said a fan yelled out that the Nuggets "were thugs," and he couldn't resist yelling over to Martin's mother, who was in the stands at the time, "That included your son."

Things got uglier after that, with Mavs' fans harassing some of the Nuggets' players' family members in the stands, and culminated with Martin yelling some obscenities in Cuban's direction, before the Mavs' owner attempted to end all of this by posting a late night apology on his blog.

It would probably have been best for everyone involved to leave this incident in the past, but Kenyon Martin, in an interview with Yahoo! Sports, couldn't resist getting in one more shot at Cuban.

K-Mart called Cuban a "coward" for the way he spoke to his mother, before defending himself from the "thug" label that got all of this started in the first place.

"My mom wasn't playing. She didn't suit up," Martin told Yahoo! Sports. "She was there to see her baby play like she is at every game. She didn't do nothing to nobody but have me. So therefore, for you to approach my mom, you're a coward. That's who you are, a coward. A tuck-your-tail-between-your-legs coward."
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"I've never sold dope," Martin said. "I've never been to jail. I've never been shot at. I've never been stabbed. I've never shot at nobody. I never got a DUI. Never got caught with a gun. None of that. I never broke into nobody's house. I used to steal [food] as a kid to get by, Lunchables. I was hungry and I went through it.

"But I'm not a thug. A thug shoots people, gets shot, goes to prison and does stuff like that. I've never done any of the above. So how am I a thug?"

Martin has a point regarding the "thug" label, and he realizes that his appearance (read: tattoos), along with the language he uses on the court, can give some people the wrong impression. But Martin is clearly playing a role out there, as Tim Thomas hilariously noted back in 2004 with his famous "fugazi" comment.

Whether Martin's tough guy act is real or not is up for debate, but it's clear his lingering anger at Cuban over last season's incident is still there. Here's hoping that three more months is enough time for him to forgive and forget, since the Nuggets won't face the Mavericks on the court until a home game on December 27th.