(Montage of Marbury dunking/on the set of Stars On Stars/fitting young urban youths for sensibly priced footwear ends.)

Oprah: (affects Brooklyn accent) Aiight folks, you’ve seen the clips, now let’s meet da man, Stephon Marbury!

(Marbury walks out to applause, Oprah claps and smiles so wide you can see her soul.)

Oprah: They love you! They love you, Steph! Sit on down!

Marbury: What up O. Nice to be here and shit.

Oprah: Gawd, you are TALL, boy! Anybody ever told you that you are a TALL man? Stand on up! Folks–

Marbury: I’m like six-three, tops.

Oprah: –ISN’T HE TALL?

(Audience cheers like idiots.)

Marbury: Y’all need to settle down.

Oprah: Steph, they are just pumped that you are here! Now look at you, dressin’ all fresh! Now that you’re a big ol’ shoe baron you gotta look the part, right?

Marbury: I like these clothes.

Oprah: And you look FABULOUS! Now, you just HAVE to tell me, WHAT is the story with the shoes?

Marbury: Well, they’s called the Starbury, just like me. But I was feelin’, you know, too many kids who don’t have it too good, they gonna drop tons on fresh kicks, or else–

Oprah: UH HUH! AND?

Marbury: –uh, else, you know, they gonna run ’round in ratty sneaks. Starbury shoes is affordable for them shorties with budgets, you know?

Oprah: (eyes bulging, hands on her cheeks) I. LOVE. IT. Folks?

(Wild applause, stagehand throws bucket of raw fish into first three rows.)

Marbury: … that’s fucked up. That why I don’t have no audience on my show, f’real.

Oprah: The show! Why don’t you tell me about the SHOW?

Marbury: Yeah, yeah, well the show–

Oprah: Because let me tell you, I saw a few of them, and you are wonderful, baby! I saw the one with Kobe, and that boy looked like a brown Adonis! When you see him next time, you tell him I got some home remedies I’d like to teach him!

Marbury: Yeah I’ll do that. Cubes was just on too, and some peo–

Oprah: Like, say, if he hurts his knee again, I say forget surgery. I learned this trick where he can just stick his whole leg in me up to the thigh and–

Marbury: What the fuck.

Oprah: I am JUST saying, he could put some gooey glasses on me, any time, no questions asked. What do you say, folks?

(Audiences engages in sycophantic hooting, stagehand jiggles keys to regain their attention.)

Marbury: I’mma need to throw up in the fish bucket.

Oprah: Now what about the BAS. KET. BALL. PLAYOFFS. You know I looove my ball, and since you didn’t even make the playoffs–

Marbury: Fuck you, you cocoa-dipped dump truck.

Oprah: –you MUST have had time to watch some games. And I know you used to play in the A-Z, so what is UP with these suspensions?

Marbury: It’s some bullshit. Basketball’s emotional, son, how you gonna tell guys to sit on a bench like bitches when they boy get hit like–

Oprah: Oooo-OOOH! That STEVE. NASH. I would slather that boy with maple syrup, suck all that tender white meat off him and then eat the marrow right out the bone! Just slurp it up! Mm-MM!

Marbury: Ain’t you married to Steadman or some shit.

Oprah: (affects ludicrous British accent) Starbury, gorgeous, it’s been wonderful having you! Hasn’t he been great, folks? Don’t we just LOVE him?

(Audience spontaneously menstruates in unison, emits high-pitched shrieking that only wolves can hear.)

Marbury: Me and Bassy gon’ be back, and this gon’ be some real shit.

Oprah: When we come back, I’ll talk about The Color Purple for fifteen minutes and you’ll all bark like adorable baby seals! Ow-ow!

At the risk of riling up two very different groups (who probably wouldn’t appreciate being compared to each other), something occurred to me today while sifting through all suspension outrage. The Spurs are the United Arab Emirates of the NBA. And not just because Tony Parker hates freedom.

They’re (ostensibly) highly sanitized, the embodiment of a certain ideal of efficiency, and in possession of some inarguably enviable resources. They’re attractive to the sort of person who’d rather vacation on a man-made island where their investment is guaranteed than take a chance in a naturally exotic locale. They lack true character, but their success pays its own dividends in terms of garnering surprisingly widespread support (viz., the “That guy’s rich, he must be doing something right!” mindset).

All of this in spite of the fact that there is an undeniably ugly side to them that manifests when they’re challenged, one that shatters that facade of sterility, but for the worse and not the better. At first blush they look like they can be a safeguard and entrusted with being a good face for the league (or, say, in charge of protecting America’s ports), but in reality they stand for — and succeed by way of — some very unpleasant things. The fact that Bruce Bowen hasn’t yet cut off the hand of an opponent for posting him up (or, at the very least, kidnapped him and induced some sort of hormone therapy) doesn’t mean he’s not thinking about it.

When I was a kid, they were a big deal. The Leafs never won anything, but the fact that they were this entity for which a whole city would unquestionably band together convinced me they were something special. I got to watch the Blue Jays win two World Series — back-to-back, no less — before I was 10 years old. I was young enough when the Raptors came to town that it didn’t occur to me why such a name would seem silly a few years down the line. The Argos … well, the CFL was always bullshit.

Like every other kid whose parents relied on external forces to keep them busy during the summer, I played soccer for a few years. I was slow with a weak kick, and ended up spending most of my time in goal, fielding meteorites from adolescent Italians with full beards and girls who had more use for jockstraps than I did.

But baseball was my real love. Getting to play little league was a revelation, and things got off to a momentous start — I hit an inside-the-park home run on my first at-bat. Fuck and yes. I was eight feet tall. I wore my cock as a tie and a belt. My coach moved me up in the order to bat clean-up after that, where I stayed for approximately three seconds before remembering I was an under-developed 12-year-old and proceeded to get about one hit for the rest of the season. I did, however, get beaned by an inordinate amount of pitches. I played first base because my coach thought we needed a lefty there … even though I was clearly right-handed. I guess he noticed I batted left, and that was all the evidence he required. (Apparently, there wasn’t too rigid a screening process for little league coaches in those days.)

Then I hit high school and the shit didn’t matter. All my friends started playing rugby and generally excelling at sports, and I started hanging out with goths and made a series of questionable romantic decisions. They all got into tremendous shape and played in tournaments across Europe, and I started piercing my face and smoking heavily. (At the time, it didn’t occur to me that these activities needn’t have been mutually exclusive.) “No guys, that’s fine — you can run around a dewy track at dawn all you please; my Marilyn Manson records aren’t going to listen to themselves, though.”

It was a holding pattern of sorts. The Jays, best as I could tell, were mired in obscurity; hockey was expanding to the point of tedium (Columbus? Really?); and who gave a shit about basketball. Then, a couple years out of high school, somebody, for some reason, sent me an article by Bill Simmons, and with it, a sea change.

It wasn’t even the shock that sports could be funny as much as the realization that sports were funny. The subtext and subplots were there all along, but as far as I could tell, nobody ever wrote about this stuff in a way that wasn’t clinical at best. (Again, I grew up in Canada and, as such, missed out on the Olbermann/Patrick era of SportsCenter.) All of a sudden, I felt like I’d been missing out on something absolutely vital for years.

So I read Simmons and, when I started my first writing job (not sports related), I pretty shamelessly emulated him at times (though I’m by no means a disciple of the Sports Guy). The idea of being able to write about something that prospective readers may not give two wooden fucks about in a way that would make them want to read on regardless seemed like a worthwhile goal. Through osmosis I eventually found Deadspin, and with it the rest of the sports blogosphere, and my Interwebbing hasn’t been the same since.

This is the most excited I’ve been about sports since hitting that inside-the-park home run. This Kissing Suzy Kolber post explains why better than I probably could, so to quote Big Daddy Drew:

Suddenly, a door had opened … sites (sprung) up seemingly overnight, awash in new ideas and the kind of crass, juvenile humor I will never tire of. It’s like walking into the world’s greatest sports bar, and everyone there has a seat open for you at their table. And they all know Simpsons quotes! And they can swear! Tremendous! … I used to think blogs were for droning diarists and annoying political commentators. I don’t anymore. There are some genuinely talented people getting together, sharing ideas and inspiring one another on these sites. In turn, it’s causing more and more people to come out of the woodwork and try it themselves.

And that’s why I’m here — sites like Deadspin, Kissing Suzy Kolber, The Mighty MJD and The Basketball Jones — these people who make traditional sports writers seem borderline useless; who make sports more interesting than I think most of us ever imagined they could be. I never thought reading about basketball would be as fascinating as Free Darko makes it, nor did I ever think I’d habitually make an absolute jackass of myself at work and school by laughing like an idiot at baseball (see: The Dugout).

Don’t get me wrong — I am not in the league of any of these people. Not even a little. Hence, The Nitwit Scene. I’ve never written about sports in any meaningful capacity, so this is by all means an experiment. I’m not sure what I have to offer the blogosphere. If I’m just taking up space, I’ll be happy to retreat to my other home. Initially, I thought this may be somewhat Toronto-centric, but I’ve found that I’m not always able to write about local sports with anything resembling rationality. So that may not be the case, after all.

And that’s it, really. I have no expectations for this. There is surely no shortage of terrible blogs on the Internet, and I’d rather not contribute to that teeming mass. So, if at any point it smells like Najeh Davenport’s been here, for the love of God, let me know.