Big Baby spoke to CSNNE's Jess Camerato last night about the lockout. It's a pretty good piece about Baby trying to cope without basketball and whatnot. Here are two things that stuck out to me, and explain quite a lot about Davis.
“I would have to say [it is important to me to please others] just because of the way people perceive me to be,” he said. “They perceive me to be this fat guy who’s kind of just making it in the league, he’s just here. I want people to like me. I want people to say, ‘Hey this boy can really play, he can play the game, he is a great player.’
“I just want people to love me, to love Big Baby. That’s why I try to have people remember me for my personality, for who I am as a person, outgoing, having fun. I just want to be accepted.
“That’s just something I’ve learned in the offseason — a lot of people might not like you. You have to love yourself because at the end of the day when it’s all said and done, nobody’s going to take care of Glen but Glen. It’s just all about growing up. I’ve grown a lot this offseason and hopefully it will help me with my career.”
I feel like today has become the "Mr. Sensitivity" day. We started in the Dump with Nate Robinson being a "look at me" guy… and Shaq kind of being the same as well. Now we're getting that from Big Baby.
Glen Davis was always the fat kid. Then, someone gave the fat kid the nickname "Big Baby." And no matter what you become, you're always going to be what you were in high school. You can become the most powerful CEO, you can cure cancer, or you can become a huge basketball star. Your personality, and more importantly, your insecurities, are poured in concrete when you're in your teens. Some of you may scoff, but I'll bet more of you will look within yourselves and realize that the stuff that tweaked you before is the stuff you're compensating for now.
Why do you think he wanted to get rid of the nickname? It's something that's haunted him for years.
The fat kid… "Big Baby"… has always wanted to be the most popular kid. He has always wanted the masses to love him. He wanted to be the guy turning down cheerleaders for dates because he's dating other, hotter cheerleaders. And what do we love in basketball?
Scorers.
The guys who do the dirty work get love too. Especially in Boston. But the scorers get the girls. The scorers get the headlines. The scorers do the post-game news conference from the podium. You never read a headline "Glen Davis' takes three charges in Celtics win" draped across the front of the Globe sports section. It's something like "Pierce scores 26 to lead C's to victory." Then somewhere else someone will write up a little something about how Baby's getting gritty and that's a really awesome thing to be happening.
Yay for Baby! A middle of the page, 100 word write up. That's as satisfying to him as an hors d'oeuvre. He wants the headlines. So he does things like try too hard and shoot too much. The best thing for Baby to do is keep seeing that shrink of his so he can maybe get past this insecurity. Because Glen Davis IS a pretty good basketball player. His biggest problem is between the ears. If he realizes what he is as a player… a pretty good 6th man who can, despite his size, grab some boards, play some defense, and hit some open jumpers from 15 feet and in… then he can have a long career doing so. The skills are all there. If he can just clear his damn head, he'll be fine.
Speaking of which, here's the super hero thing:
“I was watching the cartoon movie 'The Incredibles' and the heroes weren’t wanted by the people anymore, so now they have to blend in and be regular people,” he recalled. “The guy on the cartoon was working at a desk job and he didn’t like it. He wanted to be a hero and that’s all he knew he wanted to be. And that’s how we are. We’re considered heroes in the community and for somebody to take your super powers away, how do you deal with somebody taking your super powers away?”
Glen's super power would be drowining villains with his super drool.
I get Baby's point. He's a basketball player, and the lockout is taking that away from him. He doesn't want to do anything else. Probably why he's tweeting about getting out there and playing.
But people are going to take the super hero thing and run with it. Sort of like I did with the photoshop.
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