ON A THURSDAY afternoon in March, JaVale McGee and the Wizards were in New Orleans, preparing to play the Hornets. Just after the NBA's 3 p.m. trade deadline, McGee's cellphone rang. On the other end was Nuggets GM Masai Ujiri, calling to tell McGee he'd just been dealt to Denver. "You can fly in tomorrow evening," said Ujiri. "My assistant will call you to arrange the flights." At that point, any rational 24-year-old would be thinking, Sweet, that means I can party tonight in the Big Easy and not have to wake up early. Instead, McGee's response was this: "Isn't there a morning flight I can take?" The next day, he was on a 7 a.m. plane headed for the Rockies. Safe to say, the kid was eager for a fresh start.

Surely, you've heard of McGee. Perhaps you know him as the freakishly athletic seven-footer who took second place in the 2011 slam dunk contest when he flushed two balls through two hoops on one jump. Or as the MC Escher of Twitter, a social media surrealist who uses an alter ego to retweet himself. Most likely, though, if you're familiar with McGee, it's because of his blooper reel: a YouTube rubbernecker aptly titled "JaVale McGee Top 8 Dumb Plays" (nearly 3 million views). It features, among other things, a one-on-zero fast break in which the subject lobs the ball to himself off the backboard, dunks it and then proudly salutes the crowd -- with his team down six. That play, along with its seven other lowlights, occurred during his three-plus years with the woeful Wizards, begging the question: Now that he's rocking the uni of a legit contender, is the NBA's most bizarre player finally ready to grow up?

McGee was ready for a fresh start in the Rockies. Cody Pickens for ESPN The Magazine

EVERY DECADE, it seems, an oddball baller emerges from the NBA ranks to colorize and polarize an otherwise homogenized league. In the 1990s, it was Dennis Rodman. In the 2000s, it was the Artest Formerly Known as Ron. In the 2010s, it's JaVale McGee. Like the Worm and MWP before him, McGee is accused of being a bit off, when the reality may be that he's a misunderstood genius. "People portray him as a goofball," says teammate Kenneth Faried, "but he's actually a really intelligent guy."

"Everything I do is premeditated," says McGee, who grew up in Flint, Mich., with dreams of being a filmmaker. Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie were his faves. As a kid, he produced Blair Witch Project rip-offs by taking his aunt's camera and shooting in night-vision mode. When it came time to choose a college, USC was his top choice because of its renowned film school, but the Trojans wanted him to redshirt, so he opted for the University of Nevada. "I chose basketball over film." The decision, fair to say, hasn't affected his ability to know what entertains an audience.

Exhibit A: @JaValeMcGee34, a Twitter account with more than 70,000 followers in which McGee, under the alias Pierre (an alter ego he devised during his early NBA years), retweets himself ("cuz what I say is that important"). It's often hilarious: "I had a dream I woke up and had a nightmare about having no dreams!" Often ludicrous: "I ask all the important rhetorical questions! Do I not? That was rhetorical." And sometimes just curious, like when he posted a pic of a tot in a stroller looking intensely at the camera, with the caption: "This baby been staring at me for the last 10mins straight!" But as fascinating as Pierre is on Twitter, JaVale in person is the opposite.