Sounds like a god guy, glad to see he's taking Steph and Trevor under his wing just like the veterans did for him when he was young.

In The Paint with Vin Baker
by Tom Kertes


With a smile crinkling in the corner of his eyes, Vin Baker calls Stephon Marbury his "little brother". Now, one might think that's not quite real -- or a little too sugary on the sweetness scale -- until, on a completely different day in a completely different conversation, a very matter-of-fact Marbury calls Baker "my big brother" in a beyond-casual tone. "Vin is the man I want to be when I grow up," says Marbury. "He's everything I strive to be, been in every place I'm trying to get to. He's got that knack...You know, the way other people may have a knack for a musical instrument, or mathematics, or whatever. Well, Vin has a special knack for making people around him feel good."
Vin Baker spends ten minutes of a twenty-minute tete-a-tete talking about how great Nazr Mohammed is playing. Of course, more than anything else, it is Mohammed's unexpectedly excellent play that's keeping Baker -- a four-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA Team member -- pine-bound. "Vinnie can still play -- oh, boy can he play!" power forward Kurt Thomas says of the 33-year old center-forward. "Bigtime. He's unstoppable in practice -- I'm often matched up against him -- and you can see his talent in his short stints in games. I'm sure he'll contribute to this team in a large way before the season is over. In the meanwhile, he's all about being a great teammate. The man just has great vibes."

Vibes are what originally brought Baker to the Knicks. "When I was going through the termination procedure with Boston during the summer of '03, an amazing number of teams wanted me," says Baker. "I was talking to Larry Brown every day -- I could have won a championship with the Pistons, as it turned out -- I was talking to Toronto, and Miami. As a matter of fact, when I accepted the Knicks offer, I was IN Miami. But, I don't even know how to quite put it, talking to Isiah Thomas I just got that special feeling that New York was the right place for me. I had a tremendous respect for what he's done not only as a player but in Operations as well. He is a great person -- and he had a father-like quality to him that made me feel that this was going to be family."

Baker, of course, then re-signed with the Knicks over the summer - in spite of the fact that a number of teams were after him once again. "Most people don't even realize that there was never any question in my mind about coming back," he says. "I am very comfortable here. And, in spite of the situation right now, I still feel I made the right choice. Make no mistake, I'm one guy who wants to be out there, wants to play. And I know I can still put up big numbers. But right now I understand I have a different role. Stephon is my little brother, Trevor (Ariza) is my little brother. It's up to me to show the younger guys what it takes to be Vin Baker in 1994, or '95. It's up to me to show them what it takes to be an All-Star player or get to the playoffs as a team."

"My father, who is my best friend, is a tremendous help to me in understanding life and my situation," adds Baker. "We talk on the phone every night. He gives me balance. Dad always says 'Son, it's okay that you're not playing.' And I say, "No, Dad, it's not okay.' And he says 'Right now it's up to you to help the other guys. Your turn will come.' And he's right."

"I've been Stephon Marbury. I've been Trevor Ariza. I've already gone through what they're going through. I feel that I was signed here not only for my production but also to be a positive influence. When I was a rookie and a young player in Milwaukee, Armond Gilliam and Terry Cummings would come into the lockerroom. Now those guys had attitude -- they were veterans, they knew they could do it, and they surely felt that they were better than this rookie. And yet they took a back seat in order to encourage me and help me out."

"It is now my turn to give that back."

"I am 33 now -- and my Dad has been a pastor for 25 years," says Baker. "When I was younger, he'd tell me things and I'd be just ''yeah, yeah yeah, but I'm great, I'm a great basketball player and that's what counts. And then I go through some things and my Dad still says 'son, you're okay. No matter what. You have a home. Any time you need a place, you have a home with us. So that's what I tell the guys when they're down: "If anyone has a right to be down it's me. But I'm not. And I'm not going to let you get down. You're okay. As long as you do the right things, good things will happen to you."

In Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Baker began playing basketball at the age of seven and stood 6-4 by his sophomore year in high school. "But I wasn't all that coordinated until late in my junior year," he says. "Suddenly, it all kicked in. As a sophomore I wasn't even on the team, as a junior I averaged 16 points a game." Still, only the University of Hartford -- a small-major school if there ever was one -- offered a scholarship. "After I signed, even after I got there, a ton of big schools wanted to sign me in kind of a back-door fashion," smiles Baker. "They were telling me to transfer and all kinds of other things. What kept me at Hartford? My parents. And loyalty. Those were the only guys to stick with me when things were not so good. So I had to honor my committment."

Even though that committment nearly cost Baker an NBA career. "I had big numbers," he recalls. "But, at that level, everybody was saying 'look who he is doing it against.' And I couldn't blame them." Then late in his senior season, Hartford faced UConn -- "and I controlled their pros," says Baker. "Donyell Marshall, Scott Burrell, I had their number." And, however belatedly, the scouts' attention as well.

Though he's won 63 games one season with Seattle -- "Basketballwise, that was the best year of my life," Baker says -- Vin's favorite memory is "hosting Tim Duncan on a campus visit when he was recruited by Hartford." Suffice it to say, if Hartford -- playing Drexel, Bucknell, and Binghamton night in and night out -- ever had a Baker-Duncan frontcourt it would have gone 285-0 with a hundred shutouts. "TD was 16 years old at the time and came from the Virgin Islands," says Baker. "I'm sure that's the only reason we got him to visit."

All-Star forward, big brother, a teacher of life....Renessaince man Baker, who once sang the National Anthem before a game in Seattle, has even participated in a production of "The Nutcracker". "Next night, I'm matched up against Chris Webber and we're kind of pushing, shoving, and trashtalking to each other," smiles Baker. "And he says, 'Dude, you just danced in "The Nutcracker" and you have the gall talkin' stuff to me?"

"I must admit, he had a point."

interesting article