15 Biggest Phonies in NBA History

In the NBA, more so than in any other sport in America, players are very accessible to the public and have their personalities out on front street for everyone to view.

In the NFL and NHL, players wear full gear and rarely have visible faces, and really the only time you can see a guy's personality is when he is off the football field. It's sort of the same for MLB with guys wearing hats all the time and rarely showing off who they really are.

This leads to an interesting little subplot in basketball where the fan gets to know who a player really is, or who the player wants the fan to think he is.

Some players will put on a facade in an attempt to either seem tougher, nicer, more fun or just more marketable in general, which may or may not be a bad thing.

Most players don't even bother to put on a mask when they are on the court and just put themselves out there on front street. Others are just a bit too real (think Charles Barkley), while still others put on a show for one reason or another.

15. Carmelo Anthony

Carmelo Anthony seems like a nice enough guy, but on the court he tends to throw his body around and try to be physical.

He is a trash talker and a guy who will try to get under the skin of his opponent, but when it comes time to throw down in fisticuffs, he is like a scalded dog.

Case in point: Carmelo Anthony's now infamous "slap and run" after an altercation with the New York Knicks.

14. Kenyon Martin

Kenyon Martin has made himself a reputation of being a tough guy in the NBA over the past decade, but not everyone in the league is buying it.

Back in the 2004 playoffs, Tim Thomas, a legit tough guy in his own right, said of Martin, "Just knowing his character, he's a fugazy [fake] guy. I read a comment that Jason Richardson said nobody wants to mess with a pit bull, but I've never seen a pit bull who picks and chooses who he wants to bite."

13. Ron Artest

For all the crazy that Ron Artest exhibits on the court, is it possible that he is actually...a nice guy?

As far as crazy goes, he is about the top of the line since Dennis Rodman out-crazied everyone in the country for a good five years, but in the past few years he has become an advocate for mental health, been portrayed as a good father and has come out as a Celine Dion fan.

How crazy is that?

12. Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant has had so many personalities throughout the past decade that it's really kind of difficult to pin one down and say, "That is Kobe Bryant."

He started out as a respectful young guy who knew how to play second fiddle, and then he grew a bit of an ego and supposedly drove Shaquille O'Neal out of Los Angeles along with Phil Jackson, followed by a three-year me-first period punctuated by a rape trial. Now suddenly he is a family man who cares only about winning by any means.

I'm not sure whether I should buy the act or not.

11. Chris Bosh

The fakest tough guy in the NBA, Chris Bosh will yell, scream and holler every time he does something good, and he will do a lot of talking, but it is rare that you see him anywhere near a fight.

He has been called out by Kevin Durant in the past for being a fake tough guy when Bosh decided to put his two cents in after fouling James Harden while Durant was talking with Harden.

10. Carlos Boozer

Call him a flip-flopper, a liar, whatever you want to call him—Carlos Boozer took advantage of the kindness of a blind man...and no, I'm still not over it. I am a Cleveland fan, after all, and we know a thing or two about grudges.

Back in 2004, Carlos Boozer had a year left on his rookie deal that would pay him just under a million bucks, but then-owner Gordon Gund wanted to release him from that deal so he could pay him more, making him a restricted free agent in the process.

There was an understanding between the two parties that Boozer would sign a $39 million deal over six years, but Boozer went out and signed a $70 million deal with the Jazz, which Gund couldn't match with the funds he had available.

9. Paul Pierce

Paul Pierce is another one of those fake tough guys out there, and while I think that he is a legitimate tough guy, I think he also takes advantage of soft hits in almost every game to try to draw a foul.

Playing off his Oakland roots, Pierce always has a swagger about him and will constantly give out dirty looks or dole out his fair share of trash talk, but he will also milk an injury or flop when he can.

I mean, who can forget the infamous wheelchair incident from a few years back?

8. Wilt Chamberlain

Wilt Chamberlain slept with 20,000 women. Yeah, and I once got in a fight with Mahatma Gandhi.

I'm not here to say that Wilt Chamberlain didn't get his fair share of ladies, or even that he was gay, a slightly popular rumor put forth by Bill Simmons, but 20,000 women is a farcical number.

The number is so outlandish that Chamberlain himself couldn't even back it up, and it even made ESPN's top 10 lies in sports history list.

7. Michael Jordan

Throughout the 1990s, the NBA tried to market Michael Jordan as a good guy, clean-cut man, great teammate and great basketball player.

Trouble is that he was only one of the above.

Jordan is now considered a great teammate because the way he played with his teammates led to victories, so that one is excusable, but Jordan as a clean-cut good guy is not.

Hell, rumors still swirl that he was suspended by David Stern secretly because of gambling problems and was not, in fact, leaving to play baseball, instead using that as a cover-up.

6. Shaquille O'Neal

For years it seemed as if Shaq was one of the nicest and easiest players to get along with in the league.

However, after the whole fallout with Kobe, the "How's my ass taste" video and becoming one of the few superstars to come close to falling into the "Team Ho" category (jumping from team to team like...well, I think you get the point), it may seem as if Shaq isn't quite the guy we once thought he was.

If only there was a magical rapping genie out there who could find us the answer.

5. Reggie Miller

He is portrayed as a nice guy, and he very well may be, but Reggie Miller was a bit of a dirty player and kind of an ass.

For some reason he still has that nice guy personality, possibly because of his voice, which makes Will Smith sound like Deebo from Friday, even though he was always one to jab elbows, set low screens, taunt his opponents and get into altercations with fans, even if that fan was Spike Lee.

4. Dwight Howard

If ever there was a guy in the NBA today who doesn't deserve the reputation of being a nice guy, it's Dwight Howard.

Everywhere you go, people (usually casual basketball fans) love Dwight Howard, thinking he is the second coming of Shaquille O'Neal, a guy who really can't be duplicated.

They all remember his dunk contest performances with the Superman cape and the duel with Nate Robinson, and they see his bright shiny smile and get mesmerized, but there are few players out there who are more aggravating.

He argues every call, gets teched up like Rasheed Wallace used to and just comes across as a whiner on the court when he should be coming across as a tough guy.

3. John Stockton

What? Surely this is blasphemy!

How can I take the name of John Stockton, the most fatherly man in basketball of the 1990s, and call him a phony?

John Stockton will always be remembered for his longevity, smooth passing, sweet shooting and just being a great teammate, but few remember how dirty a player Stockton was.

Even though he looked like the dad of an All-American quarterback for 20 years, Stock was always setting screens low or elbow first, and he would drive his elbows into the stomach or chest of an opponent when boxing out.

The funny thing is, it seems like he developed this dirty habit and reputation to be a better teammate, because when you are a dirty player, opponents have to take you into extra consideration on how to deal with you.

Stockton was not fake about being a good teammate—just the wholesome personality that he and the media put forth.

2. LeBron James

LeBron James is a phony on many different tiers, a lot of it coming out when he went from a fan favorite to the most hated player in the NBA last summer.

James was crowned as The King by the media before he even stepped into a pair of Nikes as a professional, and from then until about the 2009 playoffs (Handshake-gate) he was seen as a very well mannered, levelheaded young man.

Then he was accused of quitting on his team in the 2010 playoffs and completely blew up his reputation as a smart young fellow two months later after absolutely killing a city on national television.

From there, LeBron was a bad guy. Eventually he said that he accepted the role, but you can see that he isn't exactly comfortable with people hating him, no matter what he really says.

You can't blame it all on this kid who came fresh out of high school and had to put together a persona on the fly. We all expected him to act like a well-mannered adult, not a young guy who makes mistakes like all young guys do.

1. David Stern

David Stern has to put on his calm face whenever he steps in front of a camera or behind a microphone to give an interview, but you can still see the fire burning in his eyes, the charcoal in his voice and the all-around anger in his demeanor.

He laughs off boos at the NBA draft and talks on television in a civilized manner, yet there are constantly stories coming out about his anger flowing over in a cascade of vitriol

The new book about ESPN documents a few cases where Stern has tried to intimidate other people to get what he wants and what happens when he doesn't get what he wants.

He's quite the scary man.

If you are one of those twitterers, you can follow me @JDorsey33.