It takes a certain type of player — and by extension, a certain type of person — to speak in third person perspective. Having the hubris necessary to execute such a tall order is hard to come by. Especially since I’m sure most players would rather just say ‘I’ than their full names, if only for the sake of simplicity. Luckily, people unwilling to settle with common pronouns exist. Bless these people.
Fortunately for us, this summer has brought many of them out to play. Not all third person references are created equal, however. So let’s get to evaluating:
SLAM: As far as your age goes, I think people forget that there were players just drafted in the first round this past June who played with you in your McDonald’s All American game. Do you think the Cavaliers rushed to judgment by trading you in some ways?
JH: I’ll be honest with you, I think they rushed to judgment a little bit. But, they got what they got and the Kings got a great player in JJ Hickson. So when the season starts, we’ll see how it pans out from there.
- JJ Hickson
JJ Hickson
Grade: A
First and foremost, this is very nice execution from Hickson. The interview was rather safe. Hickson provided very tame answers and tried his best to instill a sense of humility in his responses. But you can’t keep a peacock from showing its feathers, or something like that. It was subtle, but lost in the self-reference is the even subtler jab at Omri Casspi. It wasn’t the loudest statement from Hickson, a player who once asserted himself as the best power forward in the league, but there was just enough in the response for the third person to really sing.
“I feel I know what’s most important to me and that’s Glen being Glen. I can’t perform the way I need to perform if I’m not Glen Davis. I need to be in situation where I’m going to be Glen Davis. If it’s here with the Celtics or with somebody else. I just want to make sure I’m Glen Davis, whatever I do, wherever I’m at. That’s all I’m really concentrating on, being Glen Davis, and being a complete player.”
- Glen Davis
Glen Davis
Grade: C-
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and Big Baby definitely went a little overkill. For starters, he mentions himself six times in his answer without truly defining who ‘Glen Davis’ is or what ‘Glen Davis’ needs to be. At the end of the response, he says he’s concentrating on being himself and being a complete player. Clearly, whatever ‘Glen Davis’ is, he isn’t a complete player. Or else… you know what? Forget it. It’s too confusing. Come back to me when you figure yourself out, Baby.
Marshon Brooks
Grade: A+
Way too much of a good thing is obviously a good thing again. Of this batch, Brooks is definitely the MVP. We may not have any textual evidence of Brooks’ interview, but draft interviews are drawn out, tedious affairs. At the very least, he must have referred to himself in the third person for 10 minutes, which is incredible. And when almost all of the questions are directly pointed to the individual, that’s a lot of Marshon Brooks talking about Marshon Brooks’ strengths as a basketball player. Marshon Brooks.
DISCLAIMER: I do genuinely believe that people talking in third person is an awesome/fascinating thing. Of course, I would never talk in the third person because that kind of self-aggrandizement is nauseating.
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