Feature flashback: Marshall Plumlee is Duke basketball's funny man

Throughout this week on The Blue Zone, we’ll be bringing back some of our best Duke basketball features of the season.

Today's feature flashback: The funny man of Duke men's basketball

Marshall Plumlee redshirted last season and missed the first part of this season with a foot injury.

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Although he never really cracked the rotation this year after getting healthy, there's one place MP3 leads the team: jokes.

Here's part of our profile of him:

Don’t call Marshall Plumlee goofy. His brothers Mason and Miles might, but he doesn’t like it.

“I don’t call myself this, but they think I’m goofy,” Marshall said. “Just the images it conjures up of a clutz stumbling around and saying stupid stuff—I’d like to think I have a little more poise than that. But hey, apparently I’m goofy, so I’ll take it.”

Whether or not goofy is the right word, Marshall, a redshirt freshman, may just be the funniest member on the Duke basketball team.

He has yet to step on the court for the Blue Devils—after redshirting last season, he suffered a stress fracture in his foot that his kept him out of the beginning of this year—but he has found another place to star: Duke Blue Planet. Run by the men’s basketball team’s communications and recruiting coordinator David Bradley, the website features the lighter side of members of the team, bringing fans videos such as “Kyle Singler Gets Buckets.”

And when Marshall came to campus last year, Bradley got his top recruit.

“He’ll have a shot to go in the Blue Planet hall of fame, no question,” Bradley said. “Definitely the funniest Plumlee. He’s an all-timer.”

Marshall said he is not necessarily the funniest Plumlee, just the most open one. He can sometimes be too open, he said, often putting his foot in his mouth.

He described Miles, who was selected in the first round of the NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers after graduating last year, as the intellectual of the group. Senior forward Mason, he said, is the most organized and has the driest sense of humor.

But what might separate Marshall from his brothers and teammates is his flexibility on camera. He often assumes the role of the reporter in postgame interviews, questioning members of the team, including his brother Mason.

“It loosens me up more because you can’t take him seriously,” Mason said. Mason added that Marshall was not always the comedian or the funny brother, but he has slowly come into his own.

“He wasn’t really funny to me until we got to high school, then for whatever reason he started cracking jokes,” Mason said. “All kinds: clever kinds, stupid jokes.”