In unbroken, single-sentence rants, Richard Jefferson can go in a dozen directions in just a few minutes of conversation. Jefferson will, as they say, "talk your ear off." A notable tendency is the legendary You Know Gambit that Jefferson unconsciously employs constantly. The Gambit is such: Vocalized pauses in the form of "you know" punctuate his speech around words like "of" and "and" and allow Jefferson to continuously, you know, string clauses together, you know, until the sun burns hot and then cold, you know, and we all perish in the heat death of, you know, all that has been and will be, entropy having torn apart all non-trivial entities except, you know, for that holy droning of the You Know Gambit which continues unabated, you know, having wormed its way into the essence of being.
The key humor for me, you know, in this tic is that even if you yourself, you know, do not know at all where the speaker is taking you with this Gambit nor agree with the proposition after the logical connective, you know, you still sort of feel like you do have a justified true belief in that proposition, just because of the rhythmic deployment of the "you know", if you get what I'm, you know, driving at. If you don't get what I'm driving at, well, you know, that's precisely the point.
From having wielded a mop menially for the Warriors, I'd picked up this infuriating "you know" tendency myself in my own speech (though I like to call it a Gambit). Because Jefferson was sort of always talking if you ever spent five minutes around him, you know, and he'd never, ever stop, like he would talk your ears off and, you know, seeing your hearing loss would talk about his, you know, experiences with ophthamology and otolaryngology. Being myself someone with, you know, ambitions with the pen and a love of the natural rhythms of conversations it's just, you know, it's just an irresistible droning to adopt and, you know, allows you to go in totally unjustified logical safaris in the space of a sentence, which I relish. And, you know, surely Richard Jefferson must have picked the Gambit up somewhere, as I had from him, but I choose to believe it's sort of a, you know, a self-caused event within the neurochemistry of that small forward.
And indeed, what a blessed small forward: Having been traded here from San Antonio and watching those Spurs now flourish and dominate the league in his absence, Jefferson still has light spirits as he addresses his team, which is, you know, unintentionally losing in his presence, the "unintentionally" in this sentence carrying, you know, invisible diacritical marks implying winks in its pronunciation.
Jefferson is preparing for tonight's game against the Spurs in the locker room and figures to get little if any burn. But, you know, as the resident class act and elder statesman of his team, Jefferson figures to give a speech to the lowly young Warriors about forbearance and having the presence of mind to understand that their time is not today, but it will be soon. Cutting in mid-sentence is my tape recorder:
"... so what I'm saying is that you can only be innocent, you know, once, and once you, you know, know that? There's no turning back. I had my own veterans deep on the bench when I was young in New Jersey, and, you know, they waited for whatever garbage time they could get because it was a blessing at that point for them, you know, just to be in the league. Lucious Harris was my favorite, and he had such a neat perspective. The Chosen 400 he called us. You know, just to be in the league, just to play basketball professionally in America, in a nation of millions, heck, in a nation of hundreds of millions, you know, he had worked it out and mathematically, you know, you take the whole state of Wyoming's population and you're that one guy per Wyoming, just to be in this friggin league right now. Lucious loved it because he knew he was a fighter, knew he had given everything he'd had into the game and us rooks, and he was still passing out of that 400 as we spoke, and, you know, I'm kind of at that point myself, another few years, and you know, I have a five-year plan. I don't expect at the end of all that that I'll still be in the league, but you guys will be. You're a special group of guys. Some of you will get, you know, traded and cut, but for this moment, you're just about one in a million and you can never forget it, and some of you, in your finer moments, may be one in a hundred million for a day or a week or a shot, you know, all over SportsCenter and Twitter and whatever, and you know, that kid you knew, your little brother's friend, all, you know, shrimpy and with the glasses, he's gonna see your play and he's going to be on his Xbox with random people online and he's not gonna be the first one to bring your dunk or your shot up and, you know, you're representing your country and your family and your people, and, you know, are you doing something that you're gonna make those people proud? Like, you know, do you want that shrimpy kid to say No, I Didn't See It or do you want him to tell the truth and add And I Knew Him When I Was A Kid I Ate At His House I Knew His Brother? You know the answer, and, you know, in that sentence you've shown yourself the pathway, the blessing, and the, you know, the obligation and the price. I'm just an old head hanging on for dear life, you know, I can probably out-dunk you kids and play better defense, but, you know, that's about it, and soon you'll figure it out yourselves, and so tonight I just want you guys to, you know, pay attention to what the Spurs do, pay attention to how they know where to be and how they know how to conduct themselves. You know Coach looks to Coach Pop because Coach Pop is the standard-bearer. Well, keep an eye on Danny Green. Keep an eye on Tim Duncan. Keep an eye on Manu. Watch how they play, watch how they talk. I can give a hundred speeches, you know, and I guess this is number one-oh-one, haha, but, you know, watch what the Spurs are doing, because it just might mean staying in that 400 a few years longer. All I can say, guys, that it worked for me. Good luck tonight."
But the better half of Jefferson's sprawling monologue fell only on the recorder's ears, and the game had started indifferently without him and he himself, you know, having gotten lost in his reverie, found himself without a locker room to address. And I was busy mopping as I saw him enter, his beady eyes cluelessly scanning the arena's court with utterly no idea of where to be, you know, and I smirked, walked over, and escorted him to his seat on the bench and resumed my endless mopping.
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