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Marshall Henderson’s on-court antics aren’t changing. Deal with it

BROOKLYN — Marshall gonna be Marshall.

At this point, I think it is safe to say that he’s never going to change, at least on the court.

And while he may be the scourge of every stodgy sportswriter on Twitter, in all honesty, is there really anything wrong with that?

On Saturday night, with seven minutes left in Ole Miss’ 79-76 win over Penn State in the finals of the Barclays Center Classic, Marshall Henderson buried a three with a Penn State defender in his face to open up a four-point lead. He immediately turned around and, quite clearly, yelled at a father and son sitting court side that had been razzing him the entire game. Keep in mind, the listed attendance for the game was 3,088, but that also included the folks that had made the trip from Queens to see St. John’s play in the opener. The gym was pretty empty, and the game was broadcast on the NBC Sports Network.

Simply put, everyone at the game and all the people back home watching on TV saw this. Teddy Valentine certainly did, as he immediately blew his whistle, wrapped his arm around Henderson’s waist and brought the fiery gunslinnger over to his sideline for a scolding.

“Someone said something to him from the crowd and he responded,” head coach Andy Kennedy said after the game. “Ted came over and said, ‘listen, don’t talk to the fans. They can talk to you, but you can’t talk to them.’”

This came a night after Henderson got into a bit of a tussle after the Rebels knocked off Georgia Tech. According to Matt Norlander, Henderson was knocked to the floor as the buzzer sounded and had to be pulled back by his teammates as he chirped at the Yellow Jackets in the handshake line.

That’s just who Henderson is on the court.

It hasn’t changed yet, and it’s probably never going to change.

Quite frankly, it’s not that big of a deal. So he gets a little too fired up and yaps a little bit too much. His coaches are clearly OK with it because he’s still playing. His suspension wasn’t for his actions on the floor. His teammates are OK with it because he’s not only the biggest trash-talker on the team, but he may also be the best teammate. This is the same guy that was so fired up on the bench while his teammates were making a run that he slapped Martavious Newby on the rear-end hard enough that Newby audibly yelped in pain. It’s the same guy who is coming off the bench and has seen his scoring average dip five points this season, yet was the first guy celebrating when it was announced Demarco Cox was the tourney MVP.

He’s not exactly the posterchild for sportsmanship and class clearly went out the window a long time ago, but all things considered, he’s pretty harmless on a basketball court.

The real issue is his behavior off the court, which has been well-documented. Multiple arrests, one for using counterfeit money to buy drugs, and quite a bit of drinking at inopportune times. That’s where his development needs to happen. That’s where he really needs to grow, and no one outside of that Ole Miss locker room -- hell, no one outside of Marshall Henderson -- will truly know if he’s made that change. A ban on media access and social media usage will keep him out of the headlines, but it’s not going to make Henderson a better person.

Henderson’s on-court antics make him, at best, entertaining and the villain of college hoops. At worst, he’s a distraction to his team and his team alone. He’s a volume-shooter on an Ole Miss team that would surprise if it made the NCAA tournament. He’s not an NBA prospect. He’s got five more months of relevance, if you can call it that. Hand-wringing over him “changing” on the court seems pointless.

Where Henderson needs to change is who he is off the court.

He’s the only one that can do that, and there’s certainly no way to know if that’s happened simply by watching him play basketball for two hours.