*But listed here for their potential amusement, because if I don’t make this connection, who will? It’s not like anyone is left in professional journalism in the Inland Empire who remembers anything that happened in San Bernardino sports before, like, 2001.

OK, an entry in Just How Small the World of Lowlife BasketBallers is.

You know Kenyon Martin? The trashiest and cheesiest guy on a Denver Nuggets roster that is spectacularly trashy and cheesy? Even by NBA standards?

Yeah that Kenyon Martin. A foul-mouthed lout with marginal skills. (Check the link to his, uh, personal greeting apparently directed at Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban; it’s the second video bit on this Deadspin.com link; and Cuban was the guy who apologized?) 

Anyway, the IE connection to this … and there is an IE connection to almost all natural disasters and random acts of violence (I’m serious about this; Lee Harvey Oswald probably lived in Colton for a year; Wyatt Earp did.) …

The IE connection to this is … the father of Kenyon Martin is a guy named Paul Roby, who was the prize out-of-area recruit for former San Bernardino Valley College basketball coach Spencer Watkins back in the late 1970s, when Watkins was trying to make something of the SBVC program. Before settling back and riding the JC gravy train for a couple of decades of well-paid do-nothingness.

Anyway, Roby was pretty good, a 6-6 leaper. He spent a year at SBVC, made them competitive for the first time in a while, made some all-this-and-that teams and had a nickname like “Coptor” — or something like that. (Cuz he seemed to hover in midair.) I want to say he played there in 1978-79, though it could have been 1977-78. He then went on to New Mexico, which apparently was the end of his basketball career.

But Roby made an NBA contribution in the form of Kenyon Martin, the child he fathered, at least biologically. (Kenyon is still ticked off at him; I’m gonna go amateur shrink on you and suggest Cuban getting showered with an MF bomb by Kenyon Martin may actually be anger at Paul Roby. Just sayin’.)

Martin’s disdain for his biological father is mentioned in this New York Daily News story from 2003, the year the New Jersey Nets made the NBA Finals — and got taken out by the Spurs in six games. (Martin was spectacularly awful in the final two games, including a John Starksian line of 3-for-23 in the clinching Game 6. And from that moment on no one ever has suggested K-Mart has even basic NBA-caliber hand-eye coordination. He has no game at all, actually, unless banging bodies is considered “game” these days.)

Paul Roby had another son, whom he acknowledged, Richard Roby, born in Berdoo in 1985, who set a career scoring record at Colorado but has yet to play in an NBA game. He signed with a pro team in Israel, according to this wikipedia entry.

Anyway, Kenyon Martin was born in Saginaw, Mich., in 1977 — which may have happened when Roby was already in San Bernardino, putting in his one year at SBVC.

Martin played his college ball at Cincinnati, pretty much the premier waystation, under Bob Huggins, for angry, confused and dysfunctional basketball players. Nick Van Exel, Ruben Patterson, Danny Fortson, Kenyon Martin … I mean, Jerry Tarkanian recruited better citizens than did Huggins.

Anyway, K-Mart … sort of an IE guy. Second-hand. Feel free to tell your friends.