The masters are rare, those whose brilliance transcends their peers, and as such, they’re given the desired designation as a poet’s poet or a comic’s comic or, in the case of JaVale McGee, a weirdo’s weirdo.

“JaVale McGee, by far, is the goofiest teammate I’ve had. He’s goofiest guy in the NBA,” said Nuggets forward Corey Brewer, whose previous interview was interrupted when McGee swatted a microphone and declared, in a hoarse Dikembe Mutombo voice, “Not in my house!”

“He’s unpredictable,” Brewer continued, “with both what will come out of his mouth and what he’ll do in the game. I call him ‘The Great Adventure,’ because you never know what’s going to happen. It’s going to be an adventure either way it goes, good or bad.”

McGee, a 7-footer who’s lanky and loony, says weird things and does weird things and says weird things while doing weird things. On the court, the backup center will complement an aerodynamic alley-oop with a boneheaded goaltend at the other end. The only thing predictable is the unpredictability, which makes some sense when, lounging at his locker on a quiet morning recently, McGee admitted: “I have extreme ADD. They tried to put me on Ritalin, but I wouldn’t do it. I just didn’t want to take it. I was young (when it was diagnosed); it was a long time ago. But, yeah, it’s definitely fun having ADD. It’s extremely fun. I’m not boring.”

Is McGee mad? He actually enjoys the joy ride that is ADD, now referred to as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), which leads to inattentiveness, over-activity and impulsivity, often in unhealthy doses.

It’s bizarre, yes, but that makes him bizarre. And in a league where personas are rehearsed and behavior is choreographed, McGee is resplendently refreshing. He knows he can take the medicine. But what’s the fun in being like everyone else?

This is the guy who has an alter ego, whom he named Pierre. This is the guy who threw the ball against the glass, caught his own pass and unleashed a furious dunk — and then, he placed his index finger under his nose, revealing a tiny tattoo of a handlebar mustache. This is a guy who YouTubed his pickup lines, including, “Girl, you know who I am? I play for the Wizards. Oh, that didn’t work?” This is the guy who spearheaded the team’s “Harlem Shake” video and purchased all of the costumes, including, as the receipt read, the deluxe clown Afro wig, the gingerbread man adult costume and the giant python prop. And this is the guy who, during practice recently, watched a botched Brewer shot hit the backboard near the NBA logo, prompting McGee to scurry toward the glass and exclaim: “Hey, Jerry West, you OK?”

“If you left him in a first-grade class for an hour, who knows what you’d have when you got back? You might have a statue built out of desks and chairs,” said Nuggets assistant coach Melvin Hunt. “And if you left him in a class at MIT, who knows?

“He’s unique. You look at his physique, he’s unique, and guys don’t have that combination on the court, nor that combination off the court. He’s witty, at the same time he’s goofy, at the same time he’s smart, at the same time he’s silly. He can take you a lot of places.”

Or, as teammate Kenneth Faried put it, upon hearing McGee describe his medical condition from across the locker room, “I didn’t know you had ADD. I knew something was wrong with you, but I didn’t know it was that.”

“Kind of a circus unto himself”

Duncan Wall knows circuses. The author studied at the famed Ecole Nationale des Arts du Cirque in France, then chronicled the experience in his new book, “The Ordinary Acrobat: A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present.”

Wall did not know of JaVale McGee. But after being e-mailed links to a few videos of the high-flying 7-footer, Wall said in a phone interview, “My thought watching him was that he’s kind of a circus unto himself. He is acrobatic in a creative sense. What distinguishes the circus from gymnastics is this idea of creativity. This dude is just very creative with his physicality. He’s able to move in ways you wouldn’t expect him to move. He has this dynamism, especially for a guy that size. It’s like, ‘Wait a minute, he almost doesn’t know how big he is.’

“And he also has a clownish side to him too. You sent me these acrobatic dunks from weird angles, but when you start Googleing him, there’s also video of him throwing the ball away in weird ways or tripping over himself. And he seems to not take himself too seriously. So he’s kind of the circus unto himself, where he’s the star acrobat and also the star clown.”

That’s it. Of course. JaVale is a human circus.

Yes, of course, he wants to be, like, good. He’s getting paid like he’s good — four years, $44 million. And he’s not, like, bad. McGee is averaging 18.2 minutes, 9.4 points and 4.6 rebounds for one of the better teams in the Western Conference. But the 25-year-old is being paid largely on potential. He is still developing as a fundamentally sound basketball player; he’s fun and mental but not fundamental, which keeps his minutes down. He makes the easy play become hard and the hard play look easy. And so, for now, he thrives in small doses, a whirlwind of whirling dervish, spinning and soaring and scoring and swatting. A showman.

For coaches, bleary-eyed from watching video and swimming in stats, the last thing they want to hear is that basketball is entertainment. Basketball is a battle, dang it, a complicated, concentrated quest, at least for coaches. But for so many folks who pack the tent that is the Pepsi Center, they are there to be entertained. And McGee does things with his body that others can’t, such as when he jumped in front of the free-throw line and sailed past Joakim Noah for a dunk; or, with his soaring body heading out of bounds (and his head headed for the corner of the backboard) he still managed to stretch his long, strong arm over Ian Mahinmi for a throw-down; or when he perfectly timed a nasty block of Matt Barnes, then retrieved the ball and pretended to autograph it.

“I have a bad habit of going home and looking on YouTube to see what I did,” McGee said. “Because when you’re doing it, you can’t really see the angles.”

And so it is, JaVale McGee YouTubes JaVale McGee.

Head-scratching performances

Before he was famous, McGee was infamous.

He played for Washington (the Wizards, not the Generals, though there’s not much difference). That team stunk. And so, the only times McGee made it on national TV was when he did something extraordinary — or extraordinarily stupid. He once ran back on defense when his team still had the ball. One time he leapt for a breakaway dunk and dropped the ball. And he got a technical foul for hanging on the rim after a dunk, which gave him a triple-double — while his team was down 20 points.

Even with the Nuggets, he’s good for one head-scratcher per game. He’s inbounded the ball from inbounds, he’s oopsed alley-oops and he’s dished no-looks passes, only to look and see an opponent with the ball.

“In a clownish sense, he doesn’t seem to have complete control of himself,” said Wall, who teaches at the National Circus School of Montreal, considered the Juilliard of circus schools. “Every once in a while he (tries) something completely beyond him, perhaps something you shouldn’t do if you’re above 5-foot-10, and he’d fail miserably — and it’s just comedic. And he kind of stands up and looks around, almost in a clownish way, and is like, ‘What? What do you mean? Why can’t I do that?’ “

McGee is a staple on Shaquille O’Neal’s blooper reel, “Shaqtin’ A Fool,” which led to an awkward interview recently with McGee, O’Neal and TNT’s other Thursday analysts. After a Denver win, McGee played it cool in the playful interview but described Shaq as a “bully” and even referred to O’Neal’s segment, while live on air, with a nickname unsuitable for print.

That day at his locker, McGee explained what he was trying to portray with the nickname. See, there’s a perception that some African-American players have of O’Neal’s segment: “It’s him trying to stay relevant by making everyone else seem stupid.”

This leads to lingering questions: Do stupid things mean someone is stupid? Does clowning around mean one is a clown? Those who spend ample time around McGee insist he’s actually quite smart. McGee said he had a 4.3 grade point average his senior year, on an advance placement scale. Hunt said McGee is well versed in current events and religion.

“When you think of JaVale McGee, you think of some big dummy, but it’s the opposite,” said Nuggets teammate Julyan Stone. “He’ll use words and I’ll be like, ‘Where did you even learn that word?’ He knows a lot about history. He knows a lot about a lot of stuff. And he makes a lot of intelligent jokes that a lot of people don’t get, unless you have some type of IQ.”

Then, channeling his inner JaVale, Stone deadpanned: “And half the people on our team don’t have a high IQ.”

But for every story like that, there are stories like Andre Iguodala’s, when he playfully told McGee to stop badgering people.

McGee: “That’s not a word.”

Iguodala: “Yes, it is.”

McGee: “No, it’s an animal.”

Misconceptions? “Definitely”

Around his teammates, McGee is like an “SNL” actor with a variety of voices, jokes and even sounds. No, he doesn’t have a high joke batting average. But at least he’s taking cuts. Yet when he does media interviews, his voice is monotone and disinterested. His disdain for the interviews has become almost a joke among NBA reporters, amusing in the fact that JaVale loves being JaVale yet hates being asked about JaVale.

But his voice finally perked up when asked if he thinks there are misconceptions about him.

“Definitely,” McGee said. “Some people think I’m dumb, but I feel like things I say, especially on Twitter, are done purposely, because I’m bored. I don’t see the point of Twitter, so I write a lot of stuff to mess with people. But because I used to do dumb things on the court, people think I’m dumb in regular life. But once people meet me, they feel dumb themselves.”

Quietly asked about the enigma that is McGee, Nuggets coach George Karl said, “I sometimes wish I could take his human IQ and turn it into basketball IQ. That would be my only thing.”

Iguodala is probably the wisest player on the team. He points out that McGee, though clownish, isn’t like a nervous, dorky guy just trying to fit in.

“He’s the opposite of that. He’s his own guy, in a different way, and he embraces it,” Iguodala said. “That’s what I enjoy most about him.”

Say what you want about McGee; perhaps his coolest quality is being comfortable. He’s comfortable in his own skin, comfortable with his own quirks. He’s also comfortable being an NBA player with asthma. Last fall, he took a tour of the Kunsberg School at National Jewish Health, giving high-fives to kids who looked up at him and looked up to him, a fellow asthma patient playing professional sports.

“It definitely impacted me, seeing these kids, and just how strong they are with the pain they go through at such at a young age,” McGee said. “They’re definitely an inspiration.”

And he’s becoming comfortable as Denver’s circus, sometimes the acrobat, sometimes the clown, eternally entertaining.

“He clearly follows his own quirky logic,” Wall said, “which is another principle of clowning. Think of Chaplin. There’s that iconic scene in ‘The Gold Rush’ when he cooks his shoelaces and eats them like spaghetti, twirling them on his fork. It’s a ridiculous act, but it also grounded in reality we understand. JaVale’s a bit the same way. You can see the idea he’s pursuing, but then he veers off to this other place and you’re like, ‘Whoa, what are you doing, JaVale? Come on back, buddy.’

“And that’s probably the ADD, right? He’s forever distracted by the world. But it’s a good thing for television.”

Benjamin Hochman: 303-954-1294, bhochman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nuggetsnews

It’s easy to notice this Nugget

JaVale McGee marches to his own drummer. A few items of interest:

• His wardrobe includes a “Yo! MTV Raps” hat from the early 1990s and a T-shirt featuring Carlton Banks from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

• Before checking into games, he throws his headband into the stands. After games, he throws his sneakers into the stands.

• He drives a Chevy Tahoe that is painted “matte-black,” like those new college football helmets. And he rides a Segway.

• Asked to name his favorite place in Denver, he said Noodles & Company, where he orders the penne rosa or spaghetti without meatballs, but with two Parmesan chickens. Last summer, he invited his tweeps to lunch. The first 10 who arrived received free Noodles & Company, courtesy of JaVale.

Benjamin Hochman, The Denver Post