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Nuggets' Martin: I'll talk with Cuban
ESPN.com news services
A day after Mother's Day, Kenyon Martin lobbed a verbal salvo to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in defense of his own.
Martin, whose mother was verbally confronted by Cuban after Saturday night's game, said he was going to "take care of it" as early as Monday night, as the Nuggets looked to sweep the Mavericks in their second-round playoff series.
"I don't feel I need to call his name in the media and all that, but it's a little personal," Martin said after the Nuggets' shootaround in Dallas, according to a report on The Denver Post's Web site. "And I'm going to take care of it."
The incident, during which Cuban referred to Martin as a "thug" or a "punk," according to an earlier report in The Post, was part of a raucous postgame scene the NBA said it was reviewing.
Cuban told the Denver newspaper by e-mail that as he walked off the court after the Mavericks' Saturday night loss in Dallas, he saw Martin's mother, Lydia Moore, as a fan was yelling that the Nuggets were "thugs."
"That includes your son," Cuban said to Moore, according to his e-mail to The Post.
Martin's agent, Brian Dyke, had a different take on the incident, The Post reported. According to Dyke, an unprovoked Cuban told Moore, "Your son is a punk."
Neither scenario amused Martin.
"Don't say nothing to my kids or my family," Martin said, according to The Post. "If you got something to say, say it to me. But I'm going to take care of it. I'm not going to do the whole media thing, back and forth. That's his thing. I'm more of a face-to-face type of dude."
"So whenever the opportunity presents itself, then I will address it. But I got a game to go win. At some point I will, but I got a game to go win, first and foremost. So that's my focus and concentration right now."
Asked if he thought the confrontation was Cuban's way of trying to get under the Nuggets' skin, Martin said yes.
"That's what he's trying to do, but it ain't going to work," Martin said, according to the newspaper. "I'm focused on what we need to do as a team. That's what I'm here to do. But if other things present themselves along the way then you got to address them. And this is one of those situations. I don't back away from nobody except the law."
Martin said he had not experienced anything like this during his nine-year career in the NBA.
"Nobody in his position, not at all," Martin said. "But of course, a college game where people in the stands are saying stuff to your family, that's fine and dandy, during the course of the game. But when the game is over, you don't say nothing to nobody's parents; especially mine. My mom or my kids, you don't have no words for them. I'll take care of it."
