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Dejounte Murray #5 of the San Antonio Spurs handles the ball against the Indiana Pacers during the game on March 1, 2017 at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas. Mark Sobhani/NBAE via Getty Images
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Dejounte Murray has the best tattoo in the NBA

and the simplistic line drawing is perfection

Clinton Yates @clintonyates
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Daily Dose Dejounte Murray

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    12:03 PM

    Dejounte Murray is a 20-year-old kid from Seattle who plays for the San Antonio Spurs. Don’t kick yourself if you didn’t know who he was until Sunday, when his team faced off against the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals. He’s averaged less than 10 minutes per game in his NBA career, and he played only one year in college at the University of Washington before becoming a late first-round draft pick. He’s done multiple stints in the D-League.

    But he’s got an amazing tattoo.

    In the NBA these days, it’s not uncommon to see fully sleeved guys or even, in extreme cases, neck tats going up to one’s face. I’m not sure when we’ll have our first face tat player in the league, but that’s a discussion for another day. The typical NBA tattoo guy looks more like LeBron James or J.R. Smith: most of the upper torso done, including arms. Not Murray, however. In a sea of flourishing fades and extensive line work, he is a trailblazer, an outlier in said world.

    He’s got a singular image on his right shoulder that looks like something he drew on his arm in art class in fifth grade that never came off. And it’s glorious. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t about me disliking the way Isaiah Thomas’ arms look. I am completely here for one’s entire skin being covered in ink, as a general matter, if that’s one’s choice. But in the case of the league, it’s pretty much old hat.

    Murray’s got just one. It’s kind of cute, to be honest. Like a kid riding a big wheel alongside a caravan of Harley-Davidsons, he’s doing just fine pedaling on the sidewalk. Also, it appeals grandly to my childhood. It looks like a Madball.

    Like so many toys from the 1980s and ’90s, I knew what this was but had forgotten the name until reminded of it. But that imagery of a baseball designed to look like monsters never left me. As a kid obsessed with baseball and cartoons at the time, this product was so directly in my wheelhouse it wasn’t even funny. I LOVED Madballs. And in typical form for the time, it was far more than just a toy line — it was an entire brand, complete with an animated series, comic books and a video game.

    I had no idea how well-imprinted Madballs were on my brain until Twitter exploded over Murray’s adorable ink. Of course, at his age, there’s no way that his connection to that image is really about his childhood, unless his parents had the older hand-me-down toys of all time. But who cares, HE HAS A TATTOO THAT LOOKS LIKE MADBALLS.

    The kid had a solid game to close out the series against the Rockets, and for his age he is having a solid playoff run. If you know me, you know that I irrationally hate the Spurs because they’re like your perfect cousin as a kid, whom your parents point to as the example you should be but know you never will be. Don’t get crazy, though. Murray is not about to suddenly make the Spurs likable to me; however, I don’t mind rooting for him, personally.

    Of course, Twitter is going to let these jokes fly. If you don’t know, it’s not his only tat. He just has them spread out in a far more willy-nilly fashion than the usual star in the league. And for that, we salute him.

    Please, Dejounte, never change.

    Clinton Yates is a tastemaker at Andscape. He likes rap, rock, reggae, R&B and remixes — in that order.