Amare Stoudemire has lived a rough life. He is not a rough person.

He is constantly proving that. Showing love, he calls it.

Everywhere he goes, it's the same. People want to test the 6-foot-10 Cypress Creek basketball phenom.

The fans want to know if he's a monster, as his powerful game and turbulent life suggest. And then they want to know if Stoudemire's hype -- one of the best high schoolers in America, a surefire NBA lottery pick in June, if he wants -- is a myth.

Monster or myth. Those are the choices they give Stoudemire.

Chaos intrudes the basketball gym when he enters. The gym becomes some kind of weird, sophomoric playpen for fans.

Every audible fan remark is drenched with ridicule.

"You ain't nuthin'!" is a common bellow, as are boos, and this behavior trickles into the entire crowd, even adults.

It would be too much for most high school seniors, or even 45-year-olds, to handle -- the agitating, the tests of patience -- but this is Stoudemire.

"It's fun, man," Stoudemire says of the crowds. "It makes the game fun. I'm cool with it."

He has lived a rough life. He is not a rough person.

After a recent road game, Cypress Creek assistant coach Bernard Mitchell looked at head coach Earl Barnett and said: "Coach, I couldn't do it. The same people that sit here and boo boo boo Amare are asking for autographs after the game. Or they got the camera, saying, 'This is Amare Stoudemire.' "

At 18 years old, Stoudemire gets it. The "it" is this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember that holy piece of advice?

Often, it becomes: Do unto others until they do unto you. Or: Do unto others before they do unto you.

If you don't know Stoudemire, it's easy to judge him by all that surrounds him. It's easy to talk about the 23 times his mother, Carrie, has been arrested. It's easy to recall how he has gone to five high schools the past three years and had to sit out the bulk of two years because of academic problems and struggled with people who tried to latch onto his NBA-bound future.

On the court, Stoudemire is so mean, so dominating, so aggressive. He has that mean streak great players need. He doesn't want to simply outplay you; he wants to beat you to near submission. Though there's much polish to be put on his game, he has shown that he is not a myth.

Must be a monster then.

There are two ways to treat a monster. Stay away and then run when it comes near. Or poke and prod the monster, get him to explode with anger, capitalize on the emotional weakness and cut it down to size.

The latter is the crowd's intent every time Stoudemire visits.

When they get him to that boiling point, a funny thing happens.

Nothing.

Maybe he's not a monster.

And maybe all the hardships are not at the core of who Stoudemire is. He might forever be defined by some of those things, which is sad. It also just might be part of his extraordinary tale: He stayed straight despite all the crookedness around him and still lived his dream.

Nobody talks much about that aspect of Stoudemire. He could have -- probably should have -- given up long ago, but he hasn't.

He has lived a rough life. He's not a rough person.

After a game at University High two weeks ago, Stoudemire was putting on his wrinkled white shirt when a woman approached him with a video camera.

He hugged the woman as her friend recorded the moment.

"He's so nice, too," the woman behind the camcorder said.

"Mmm hmmm," the other woman replied.

Stoudemire grinned. Kindest words he heard all night.