POOF!
First, Gilbert tells Men’s Journal a horror story about shaving his pubes…
“When I was new in the NBA the team veterans convinced me to shave, you know, down there, because they said the hair stinks. I used my girlfriend’s razor, which was rusty and gave me keloids. The doctor prescribed medicine to dab on, but I just poured it all over. Three days later I woke up screaming. The skin was burnt off my scrotum, down to my crack, everything — just raw flesh. I still had to run and play, so I used a numbing spray for a month until it healed. Now I use clippers.”
“Aaaargh! It burns! And the goggles… the goggles… They do not work!”
…then, he reveals on his NBA.com blog that the subsequent discomfort led to an explosion of talcum power in the middle of a game.
The Shaving “Down There” Story
I was 18! I mean, what to do you expect? At 18 you’re experimental.
I mean come on.
You know what’s funny about it? I know everybody is saying “too much information,” but at the time, that was the joke of the team that year. It got us through the year with great laughs because if nobody had any new material, we just always went back to that.
“You been using any shavers lately?”
It was my second year. Coach Musselman was there and made fun of me for it all year long.
It was the worst pain I ever felt. I told myself, if I can play through that, I can play through anything.
Thinking back on it now, it was pretty funny. I remember we were in L.A. and we were playing the Clippers and we were trying as a team to find stuff to try to cool the flesh down and we couldn’t find anything.
Everything hurt – putting tights on, no tights, jock straps – we tried everything and it didn’t work. So what I decided to do was after I put my compression shorts on, I taped them to my leg around my thigh and I just poured a whole bottle of baby powder in there.
Against L.A. I remember driving to the hole and got hit by Keyon Dooling and all you see is POOF, a cloud of smoke of baby powder. That’s what I’m saying, it’s funny now at 26-years old to laugh at it, but it hurt then.
My teammates used to be like, “Oh, there goes Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Oh, the good old days. You know I tell you guys you got to have memories, that’s a memory.
Seriously, Agent Zero… Get well soon. It’s obvious that all this time away from the game, rehabilitating and recuperating, are taking you to that special place where crazy gets scary! 
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