Cavaliers guard explains why a cartoon reminds him to love himself
Dating back to his days with the New York Knicks, defensive-minded swingman Iman Shumpert’s public pronouncements of love for all things 1990s — from the title of his mixtape to the styles he rocked to the claims that “The best music, and basketball was at its high in the ’90s” and beyond — led many of us to believe that the hightop hairdo for which he became famous stemmed primarily from his appreciation for one of the dominant looks of that era. (To be fair, Shump himself spread that notion: “I was thinking, man, I’m a ’90s kid, and I ain’t never had a high-top fade before. And then I realized most of my favorite players had one, too.”)
In a new interview with VICE Sports, though, the Cleveland Cavaliers stopper offered a different inspiration: Johnny Bravo, the cartoon character at the center of a Cartoon Network series of the same name in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Quoth Shump:
Johnny Bravo is my favorite cartoon character. This is how Bravo’s hair was. Like, everybody thought I was going for a high-top fade. I did a high-top haircut so I could have Bravo — like, I’ve got a Johnny Bravo tattoo, bruh.
That is true, and it is something we’ve known about for a couple of years:
… but the initial story about Shumpert’s follicular and arm art suggested correlation (“He loves the haircut so much he has a tattoo on his left forearm of Johnny Bravo, a cartoon character with pompadour-style hair”) rather than causation. Now, the man himself has cleared it up: Iman Shumpert has a high-top because he, too, wants to be a one-man army.
But why does Shumpert have such a deep and abiding affection for Johnny Bravo, you may ask? Well, because Johnny Bravo is a flippin’ role model, that’s why:
Johnny Bravo taught me growing up, right — because you know, me and my brothers, we used to roast every day. “Yo, you ugly. Yo, you ugly! You ugly!” Everybody was ugly. First thing we’d say to somebody: “You ugly. You super ugly.” Johnny Bravo never let nothing nobody was saying alter what he had to do that day. And he’s not worried about what you wearing and what you like. All he’s worrying about is finding his counterpart. He’s looking for a girl every day, and you know what? If this one turned him down, that wasn’t finna ruin his day.
I think Johnny Bravo, the real concept behind him, is: every opportunity, seize that moment. Like, Johnny Bravo wasn’t finna tell you, “Oh, man, I’m finna go talk to that girl.” No, he’s finna skip across the street and run up on her, tell her to do the Monkey with him. And she might dance with him, randomly. They just slide into the picture: “Do the Monkey with me!” All of them doing the Monkey, like, you know what I’m saying? Don’t nobody do the Monkey. Don’t nobody do the Monkey! But Johnny Bravo hit the Monkey? You hitting the Monkey, straight up.
Whoever created that cartoon was a genius, because he made kids develop a “love yourself” mentality.
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Shumpert had to draw on that mentality from the very beginning of his playing career. When the Knicks selected him out of Georgia Tech with the 17th overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft, Knicks fans — as they just about always seem to do — responded to the pick with a cascade of boos. Sure, Shumpert might have been a 6-foot-5 athlete with long arms, wheels for days, a hard-charging defensive mentality and a motor that never stops running, but he wasn’t a recognizable name among pro fans who might not have watched a ton of non-blueblood ACC games; as such, he instantly met with rejection from New Yorkers.
That stuck with him, as he told VICE:
When I first came to the Knicks, when I would get dunks and steals, when I used to look in the crowd, I used to be like, “Y’all didn’t even want me. I used to yell that to the crowd, like, “Y’all don’t even want me. Y’all wanted Jimmer Fredette. Y’all wanted Chris Singleton. Y’all wanted anybody before — y’all wanted anybody but me, G. Y’all booed. Y’all didn’t even want me. Stop. Don’t cheer now. You know what I’m saying? Like, I had that mean streak to me. And they liked it, but they didn’t even realize I was totally against them. I was playing for the name on the back of my jersey and the teammates that I had. I was not playing for the city yet. I didn’t feel the city yet.
Shumpert says he would later come to embrace New York after moving into the city and feeling an outpouring of love and apologies after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during the opening game of the Knicks’ first-round playoff series against the Miami Heat. He would go on to become an important 3-and-D role player on the 2012-13 Knicks team that won 54 games, an Atlantic Division title and New York’s first playoff series since 2000, but struggled through injuries, in-fighting, all sorts of trade rumors, issues with his coach, flagging confidence and poor performance before eventually being shipped along with J.R. Smith to Cleveland last season in a trade that helped propel the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals.
Now, he’s a new father with a new contract and a significant role coming off the bench for the best team in the Eastern Conference. After missing three months following a preseason wrist injury, Shumpert has struggled for the bulk of this season but has shown some flashes recently, especially when Tyronn Lue has chosen to go with a smaller lineup. As he looks back on his Knicks tenure and the beginnings of his relationship with Knicks fans with the benefit of distance, he still doesn’t seem to appreciate the way fans or the franchise tend to operate:
I just felt like they do too much of what they think is hot, what they think is this, what they think is that, trade this player, let’s get this player. It’s like, “Dog, when are y’all just going to take a team, keep them for five, six years, keep them together and win?”
A lot of Knicks fans have been wondering that same thing for the last couple of decades. That doesn’t mean they’re going to stop booing on draft night, though. (Just ask Kristaps Porzingis.) Here’s hoping the Knicks’ next first-rounder — who, shoutout to Andrea Bargnani, won’t be selected until 2017 — has also spent some time learning from Shump’s favorite pompadoured hero. Rookies in New York need all the reminders to love themselves they can get.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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